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I 



FARMING 



WITH 



GREEN MANURES, 



ON 



PLTJMGROVE FARM. 



/ BY 

C. HARLAN, M.D., 

WrLMINGTON, DELAWARE. 



SECOND EDITION. REVISED AND ENLARGED. 



j.p-i.y ^■ 



PHILADELPHIA ! 
J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO, 

1880. 






Copyright by 

C. HARLAN, M.D. 

1880. 



PREFACE. 



In publishing these pages I have two objects 
in view — the assistance of those who need ad- 
vice and the instruction of my foreman on the 
farm, that he may understand the reason why he 
is required to do certain things. But how should 
I know any better than he does the laws of veg- 
etable life and the best course to pursue to obtain 
remunerative crops? 

He is supposed to be practically acquainted with 
the whole art of agriculture. Now, the fact 
must be plain to every one that no man, in his 
short life, by his own experience and observa- 
tion, can become master of this art, because it 
takes a whole year to try one experiment. From 



4 PREFACE. 

this fact, his progress iu knowledge must be very- 
slow indeed. 

Well, then, besides the actual trials on the 
farm to improve his mind, the next best thing 
to do is to study carefully the recorded expe- 
rience of other farmers and the writings of the 
able investigators of the chemistry of plant-life. 
To do this with profit he should be acquainted, 
to a certain degree, with every science which has 
shed any light upon the subject. 

Now, the working farmer is generally too 
much engaged to acquire this knowledge. Well, 
then, if he will please to lay aside all preju- 
dice against me, we will read for him and 
report a few of the grand truths which we 
find scattered through the vast tomes of other 
times and the periodicals of our own rushing, 
busy century. 

Whether I shall ever receive any thanks for 
this is a very small matter. 

The consciousness of having done good to 
others will amply repay me for all my trouble. 



PKEFACE. 5 

I Sincerely believe that he who tills the soil 

is helping God to feed the world, for without 

tillage the earth could not support one-tenth of 

its present population. Therefore, what I can 

do in this good and noble cause it is my duty 

to do. And I may as well confess that to me 

it is no tiresome labor, because I love the art, 

and ever have loved it from my boyhood to the 

present hour. 

C. H. 

708 Maeket Street, WrLMiNGTON, Del., 

November 28, 1876. 
1* 



PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 



The first edition of this little work being 
nearly exhausted, I feel under obligations to 
the farmer to prepare a second, revised and 
enlarged with care and attention. 

The work has been spread broadcast, but 
rather too thinly sown over a large portion of 
the United States. 

The result has been that letters have come 
to me, not only very complimentary, but asking 
for more minute information and more ex- 
tensive elucidation of the different subjects 
mentioned in the first edition. From this 
cause I am now better able to know what is 
wanted by the agricultural community. 

I see plainly that an author, in writing upon 
the art and science of tillage, should remember 



8 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 

that he is talking to all classes of society, to 
all shades of mental development and to all 
grades of a scholastic education — that many 
of his readers, though deeply versed in math- 
ematics, in astronomy, in mercantile science 
and in general literature, have but a very lim- 
ited knowledge of farming. Yet they will be 
tillers of the soil. 

Hence they want plain, practical and common- 
sense instruction, and always sufficiently minute 
that they can practice it themselves without the ne- 
cessity of learning any part of it from hired men. 

As an illustration I will mention one case. 
A gentleman-farmer, who may be learned and 
wise enough to be a member of Congress, wrote 
to me to know how he should work his pota- 
toes under a mulch a foot thick. 

Now, who would suppose that any one could 

be found who would think of working potatoes 

in that condition? 

C. H. 
July 17, 1880. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

PAGE 

NiTEOGEN, Phosphoric Acid, and Potash 13 



CHAPTER II. 
Covering the Soil 22 

CHAPTER III. 
Surface Manuring 28 

CHAPTER IV. 
Water as a Solvent ■> 35 

CHAPTER V. 
Tillage a Manure 44 

CHAPTER VI. 

Green Manures 49 

9 



10 CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER VII. 

PAGE 

Green Corn as a Protection and Mulch for 
Wheat 57 

CHAPTER VIII. 
Hungarian Millet 66 

CHAPTER IX. 
Green Clover 71 

CHAPTER X. 
Green Rye 84 

CHAPTER XI. 
Green Buckwheat 89 

CHAPTER XII. 
White Mustard 95 

CHAPTER XIII. 
Turnips 98 

CHAPTER XIV. 
Barnyard Manure 103 

CHAPTER XV. 
Feeding Grain for Manure 108 



CONTENTS. 11 

CHAPTER XVI. 

PAGE 

Forage for the Horses on the Farm 114 

CHAPTER XVII. 
Loss of Manure 124 

CHAPTER XVIII. 
John Johnston and Others on Raising Wheat... 129 

CHAPTER XIX. 
The Preservation of Health on the Farm 137 

CHAPTER XX. 

The Restoration of Poor Land by Green Ma- 
nures 144 

CHAPTER XXL 

How TO Improve Large Farms with Green Ma- 
nures 161 

CHAPTER XXIL 
Green Manures for Wheat 175 

CHAPTER XXIII. 
Green Manures for Indian Corn 198 



12 CONTEKTS. 

CHAPTER XXIV. 

PAGB 

Geeen Manures for Potatoes 218 

CHAPTER XXV. 
Green Manures for the Market-Garden 240 

CHAPTER XXVI. 
Green Manures for the Orchard 250 

CHAPTER XXVII. 
The Animals and Birds of the Farm 254 

CHAPTER XXVIII. 
On Dividing the Farm into Fields 261 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 



CHAPTER I. 

NITROGEK, PHOSPHORIC ACID AND POTASH. 

QTUDY the profound works of Professor 
'^ Johnson, How Crops Grow and How Crops 
Feed, 

Read with close attention the broad and 
practical wisdom of Joseph Harris in his 
Walks and Talks on the Farm.' 

Devote long hours of patient thought to the 
thirty years of untiring experiments of Lawes 
and Gilbert, and you will be perfectly convinced, 
that Nitrogen is the most precious, the most im- 
portant, and the most costly element which the 
farmer needs to produce a heavy-paying crop. 

2 13 



14 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

And next to this in value is phosphoric acid, 
and then potash. 

Other minerals and elements are required, but 
they generally exist in the soil in sufficient quan- 
tity, or can be added to it at much less expense. 

Then comes the great question, from all 
civilized countries : How shall we obtain ni- 
trogen f Must we buy it in nitrate of soda, 
in sulphate of ammonia or in guano, at thirty 
cents a pound? Certainly not, unless we can- 
not obtain it in any cheaper form. 

Four-fifths of the atmosphere is nitrogen. 
Does not Nature convert a portion of this every 
day into nitric acid and ammonia? If not, 
whence comes that lavish profusion of these 
compounds discovered by the chemists? 

"The Rhine," says Professor Johnson, "daily 
removes from the country supplying its waters 
an amount of nitric acid equivalent to two hun- 
dred and twenty tons of saltpetre. The Seine 
carries daily into the Atlantic two hundred and 
seventy tons, and the Nile pours eleven hundred 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 15 

tons into the Mediterranean every twenty-four 
hours." — How Crops Feedj p. 270. 

Here is a waste of this element which is 
incomprehensible if we have no means to save 
it. Only three rivers carry away as much 
nitrogen every year as there is in one hundred and 
seventy- four million bushels of wheat or Indian 
corn! 

Our farms are in the same condition as the 
lands drained by those streams. 

The annual rains percolate the soil, dissolve 
the nitrates, and bear them off to enrich the 
waters of distant oceans. But all is right. 
There is a way to save these golden treasures, 
if we have the wisdom and the will to do it. 

Phosphoric acid, when needed on the farm, 
can always be obtained from bone, either ground 
fine or as superphosphate of lime. 

Potash, according to the researches of Mr. 
Lawes, "is generally found in sufficient quan- 
tities in the soils, and the artificial supply is 
not required." 



16 fAeming with green manures. 

But, notwithstanding this fact, we should use 
all the wood-ashes we can procure at a reason- 
able price, particularly on sandy land, for potash 
is often greatly needed on that kind of soil. 

In 1875 I compiled a table showing the 
amount of nitrogen in a ton of different crops 
as compared with some of our standard fer- 
tilizers. It was very kindly published by Mr. 
Harris in his Walks and Talks, No. 14^, in the 
American Agriculturist It is as follows: 

Nitrogen 
in one ton. 

Hungarian Millet, in blossom 20 pounds. 

Green Clover 12 

Green Bye 11 

Barnyard Manure 10 

White Mustard ' 9 

Green Buckwheat 8 

Green Corn 6 

Turnips 4 

Ground Eaw Bones 100 

Peruvian Guano 280 

Nitrate of Soda 300 

I have made one alteration in this table. I 
have ascertained, from a recent analysis, that 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 17 

green corn contains 6 pounds of nitrogen, in- 
stead of 4 pounds in a ton. 

Now let us examine into the real value of 
this wonderful element, and also of the other 
two, whose merits are not far behind it. 

"Professor Johnson, after a very careful 
consideration of the whole subject, estimates the 
value of the ingredients of manures as follows : 

Potash 7 cente per pound. 

Nitrogen 30 " " " 

Soluble phosphoric acid 16|^ " " " 

Insoluble " " 6 " " " 

"Taking Prof. Johnson's figures, the potash, 
phosphoric acid, and nitrogen in a ton of 
clover hay would make it worth $17.57 for 
manure. Bran would be worth $22.10; peas, 
$22.84; malt dust, $31.30; linseed oil cake, 
$33.76; and decorticated cotton -seed cake, 
$47.56 per ton for manure." — Walks and TalkSj 
No, 101. 

Now, if I understand the revelations of 

chemistry, nitrogen exists in all of these sub- 
2* B 



18 FAEMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

stances, only in the form of albuminoids. 
And nothing but the complete decomposition 
of these protein bodies, and the conversion of 
their nitrogen into nitric acid or ammonia, 
will render them available as plant-food. 
Taking this view of the case. Professor John- 
son most certainly never intended to convey 
the idea that nitrogen in clover hay, etc. is 
worth 30 cents per pound. 

If it is worth that much in dry hay, it is 
worth 25 cents per pound in green corn. Yet 
Joseph Harris ridiculed this idea in 1875 
with unaccountable severity, considering that he 
taught the same doctrine in 1872. 

The Hon. George Geddes says : " When we read 
in Walks and Talks on the Farm that the manurial 
value of a ton of clover hay is $15.82, we 
are silent out of respect to the high source 
from which we received the information." 

That is decidedly wrong. No man should 
be silent if truth must suffer in consequence 
of that silence. 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 19 

Is it disrespectful to point out the dark 
spots in the sun ? or must we only notice the 
dazzling splendor of his golden beams and 
for ever praise his all-pervading power? 

But enough of this. The opinion of an- 
other great man I must criticise in the interest 
of truth and science. 

When Liebig published his immortal work, 
Chemistry applied to Agriculture and Physi- 
ologyy he taught the true value of nitrogen in 
manure. But soon after this, by reasoning upon 
a subject which can only be properly examined by 
observation and experiment, he jumped to a false 
conclusion — that " ashes represent the whole nour- 
ishment which vegetables receive from the soil." 

Hence in using manures he says : " Would not 
their effect be precisely the same in promoting 
the fertility of cultivated plants if we had evap- 
orated the urine and dried and burned the solid 
excrement ?" 

This was his sincere belief. And year after 
year, in every subsequent work, he would not 



20 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

bend a line from his tangent, but straggled hard 
by most ingenious argument to carry the whole 
agriculture of the world with him. 

Lawes and Gilbert subjected his theory to a 
most rigid investigation. The ashes of fourteen 
tons of barnyard manure were applied for thirty 
years in succession on the same acre, and pro- 
duced each year only two bushels of wheat more 
than the continuously un manured acre. The arti- 
ficial mineral manures were also used in the same 
way on another plot, and with the same result. 

Besides all this, able chemists have demon- 
strated, by growing plants in distilled water, 
that to produce a good crop there must be ni- 
trogen in the soil or in the water. 

They have dissolved the ashes of plants in 
pure water, and then, by adding a few grains of 
nitrogen in the form of a nitrate, have produced 
a luxuriant vegetation; but without the nitrogen 
only a very feeble growth could be obtained.* 

* See a beautiful plate in illustration of this subject in 
the American Agriculturist, March, 1876. 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 21 

The fact is, Liebig saw a great light illumi- 
nating the heavens of his beloved science, and 
not having the patient research of less gifted 
minds, he uttered premature thoughts, grand in 
their conception, but too deeply colored by his 
excited imagination. He discovered what seem- 
ed to him a vast storehouse of ammonia in the 
air, and supposing that all plants could absorb 
through their leaves from that source alone all 
the nitrogen they needed, he made a positive 
declaration that there is no necessity of collect- 
ing the elements of the atmosphere in the soil. 

Now, we regard this question as settled, that 
the nitrogen of the air, though all-sufficient, 
must in some way be oxidized and become a con- 
stituent of the earth before plants can receive 
and assimilate it and make it a part of their 
structure. 



CHAPTER II. 

COVERING THE SOIL. 

TT7HEN green crops are raised to improve the 
^ * land it is not indispensable that they should 
be ploughed in to accomplish this object. You 
need not turn them in till you are under the ne- 
cessity of doing it to prepare the ground for a 
future crop. But if the green dressing should 
be Hungarian millet or white mustard, or any- 
thing that might seed the ground at an improper 
time, you can either plough it in or cut it down 
when in blossom, and it will improve the soil in 
proportion to its ability to shelter it. 

Cuthbert W. Johnson says : " An English 
farmer inadvertently left for some months a door 
in his fallow field; for several years after the 
crops were particularly luxuriant where the door 

22 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 23 

had been lying — so much so that one would have 
said that some rich manure had been applied to 
that spot." 

Anderson, an eminent Scotch writer, says in 
his Economy of Manures: "Every practical 
farmer knows or ought to know, for the facts are 
constantly before his observation, that land can 
be made exceedingly fertile without manure. 
He must have noticed that if any portion of the 
soil has been covered, either accidentally or de- 
signedly for some time, by water, stone, plank, 
logs, chips, brush, rails, corn-stalks, straw, build- 
ings of every description, with hay or straw ricks, 
leaves or clover — and in fact, that under any and 
every substance which has covered its surface 
closely — it (the surface soil) invariably becomes 
exceedingly fertile, and that the degree of this 
fertility is totally independent of the covering 
substance." 

After reading these remarkable statements of 
Johnson and Anderson, both men of extensive 
observation and intelligence, we can more fully 



24 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

credit the experiments of Gurney in England 
upon his fields of grass. 

Green grass covered with straw gave him in 
one month five thousand eight hundred and 
seventy pounds per acre. The same kind of 
grass uncovered produced but two thousand two 
hundred and seven pounds. Ko rain fell during 
this experiment. Another plot gave in one 
month, when covered, three thousand four hun- 
dred and sixty pounds per acre, while the rival 
lot, not covered, yielded but nine hundred and 
seventy pounds. Clover that was covered grew 
six inches, while that uncovered grew but one 
inch and a half. 

And where a certain quantity of stall dung 
would double the crop of grass the mulch 
spread on top of the manure would increase the 
crop six times. He used about one ton and a 
half of straw per acre. 

" Boussingault found upon comparing water 
obtained by melting two portions of snow — one 
taken immediately as it fell upon a stone terrace, 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 25 

and the other (from the same fall), after it had 
Iain for thirty-six hours upon the soil of a con- 
tiguous garden — that the second contained ten 
times as much ammonia as the other. It is well 
known that snow has a most beneficial effect 
upon soils, and, amongst other causes, Boussin- 
gault believes that it may act in preventing 
ammoniacal emanations from the soil." — Journal 
of the Royal Agricultural Society of England. 

Now, we can believe there is much truth in the 
old proverb, that "Snow is the poor man's 
manure." 

Not having straw nor any barnyard material 
to top-dress his wheat, he has often noticed that 
his crop was much better when kind Nature cov- 
ered it for him. 

Does not this investigation of the great chem- 
ist reveal to us owe, if not more, of the deep and 
far-reaching causes why mulching is so beneficial 
to the land ? 

Professor Johnson says : " The ammonia of the 
soil is constantly in motion or suffering change, 



26 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

and does not accumulate to any great extent. 
In summer the soil daily absorbs ammonia from 
the air, receives it by rains and dews, or acquires 
it by the decay of vegetable and animal matter. 
Daily, too, ammonia wastes from the soil by vol- 
atilization, accompanying the vapor of water 
which almost unceasingly escapes into the atmo- 
sphere." — How Crops Feedj p. 247. 

This is a revelation of scientific truth which 
cannot be misunderstood or explained away. 
Was ever a stern necessity to do anything more 
clearly demonstrated to the world? We must 
keep the soil covered to promote and retain 
its richness. But how often do we strip the 
ground naked, and then bake it in the ever- 
burning sun! 

Col. Waring, of Ogden Farm, says: "I had 
read so much about top-dressing that it was 
determined to try it on this apparently forlorn 
hope, and the land was well covered before 
the heavy rains that fell early in May. The 
result was almost magical. While that portion 



FAKMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 27 

which had looked so promising as to seem not 
to need manure did not yield 1000 pounds 
per acre of poor hay, ox-eyed daisy and red 
sorrel, this poorer part, solely as an effect of 
the top-dressing, produced fully 4000 pounds 
per acre of very fair hay." 



CHAPTER III. 

SUEFACE MANUEING. 

"VTOT many years ago it was the universal 
custom to plough in manure the very day or 
hour that it was spread upon the field. Farm- 
ers became irritable and had but little to say 
if anything prevented immediate ploughing after 
the precious contents of the barnyard were 
spread broadcast before their eyes. It was a 
prevalent opinion that nearly all the richness 
would dry out in a few days if exposed to the 
weather. 

They had often noticed that manure under 
cover was about twice as good as that which 
lay out of doors all summer, but they did not 
discover that the great injury which it had 
received was owing to the leaching rains, which 

28 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 29 

dissolved and carried off its richest elements, 
and not to the sunlight which occasionally fell 
upon it. 

When manure is spread it soon becomes dry, 
and then all chemical changes cease; fermenta- 
tion is arrested; it will decay no more in that 
condition. And when the dews settle and the 
rains descend upon it, it will dissolve, day 
after day, and a peculiar dark rich coffee will 
saturate the soil beneath it so effectually that 
Alderman Mechi could hardly do it better 
with his steam-engine and his pipes and hose 
in every field. 

John Johnston writes to the Country Gentle- 
man : " If I only had Col. Pratt here for five or 
six months I could convince him that surface 
manuring is the true way, and will, before ten 
years from this, be the way generally that 
manure will be used." 

And in the Genesee Farmer he says to Joseph 
Harris: "I am not surprised at your corre- 
spondent. Buckeye, being opposed to surface 
3* 



30 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

manuring. I would have been so myself had 
not experience taught me better. I have used 
manure only as a top-dressing for the last twen- 
ty-six years, and I do think one load used that 
way is worth far more than two ploughed under 
on our stiff land." 

Nearly ten years after this was written he 
speaks, if possible, with even a stronger faith 
than ever in defence of his favorite practice. 

Harris writes in Walks and Talks, No, 112, 
that "John Johnston, who has a far heavier 
clay soil than the deacon, says he has found 
by actual trial that one load of rotted manure 
applied as a top-dressing to grass-land in the 
autumn, and the land ploughed up and plant- 
ed to corn in the spring, is worth as much 
as three loads of fresh manure ploughed 
under." 

Major Dickinson, another able and extensive 
farmer, declares: "I hold that one load of 
manure on the surface is worth two loads 
ploughed in." 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 31 

Charles B. Calvert, a distinguished farmer 
of Maryland, "is a strong advocate of the 
application of stable manures upon the surface, 
instead of ploughing them in." — Cultivator. 

Mr. Bright writes in the Gardener's Monthly : 
"The practice of top-dressing or of surface 
manuring has long been the favorite method 
employed by all intelligent gardeners within 
the circle of my acquaintance. A piece of soil 
heavily shaded by surface manuring actually 
decomposes like a manure-heap; that is, it 
undergoes a sort of putrefaction or chemical 
change which sets free its chemical constituents, 
unlocks, as it were, its locked-up manurial 
treasures, and fits its natural elements to be- 
come the food of plants. Manure, then, I say, 
chiefly upon the surface. Do not waste your 
manures by mixing them deeply with the soil. 
Surface manuring and mulching are the true 
doctrines. I am sure of it." 

In Todd's Young Farmer's Manual I find 
the following statement: "James M. Garnet, 



32 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

a Virginia farmer, an excellent writer on agri- 
culture, says: ^I began penning my cattle late 
in the spring, and continued it until frost in 
pens of the same size, moved at regular inter- 
vals of time, and containing the same number 
of cattle during the whole period. These pens 
were alternately ploughed and left unploughed 
until the following spring, when all were planted 
in corn, immediately followed by wheat. The 
superiority of both crops on all the pens which 
had remained unploughed for so many months 
after the cattle had manured them was just as 
distinctly marked as if the dividing fences had 
continued standing ; it was too plain even to ad- 
mit of the slightest doubt.' 

" A near neighbor, a young farmer, had made 
the same experiment on somewhat different soil 
the year before, but with results precisely the 
same. Similar trials I have made and seen 
made by others with dry straw alternately 
ploughed in as soon as spread, and left on the 
surface until the next spring. In every case 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 33 

the last method proved best, so far as the fol- 
lowing crop would prove it. 

"The same experiment has been made by 
myself and others of my aquaintance, with 
manure from the horse-stables and winter farm- 
pens, consisting of much unrotted corn-offal, 
and without a solitary exception either seen by 
me or heard of the surface application after 
the corn was planted produced most manifestly 
the best crop. 

" Upon these numerous concurrent and unde- 
niable facts my opinion has been founded, that 
it is best to apply manure on the surface of the 
land.'^ 

An able writer in the Cultivator in 1843 says: 
" I have seen spots where cattle had been penned 
at night for a month or two; for six years 
afterward, the vegetation was double on those 
spots to any other part of the field, although all 
the manure had been carefully removed and 
scattered about. Now, nothing but the liquid 
could have gone into the earth, and yet the rains 



34 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

of six years never washed away the beneficial 
effects." 

Now, if the valuable material of the barnyard 
will not suffer waste when spread upon the open 
fields, and is better there than anywhere else, then 
the green crop, whatever it may be, that is raised 
to improve the land, should be mown down in 
summer and in autumn, and should be left upon 
the surface as long as possible — to prevent evap- 
oration, to disintegrate the soil, to retain mois- 
ture, to be leached by rains and dews, and finally 
to enrich the ground by its total decomposition. 



CHAPTER IV. 

WATER AS A SOLVENT. 

npHE mineral constituents of the bones of man 
-^ and animals are but the ashes of our daily 
food. 

Every year from the rock and soil these ashes 
come, decomposed and dissolved by water, car- 
bonic acid and oxygen. 

Green manures, by their ability to collect and 
preserve moisture on the surface and in the soil 
when cut down or ploughed in, render an im- 
mense assistance in the growth of the organic 
world. Water is the blood of vegetation. It 
carries nourishment from the ground to the 
stem, to the leaf, to the seed. In its solvent 
action rocks become the food of man. 

When the soil is dry no mouldering down to 

35 



36 FARMING WITH GEEEN MANURES. 

a finer dust, no disintegration of minerals, no 
decay of any kind, can be discovered ; every 
atom, apparently stationary, seems fixed and 
firm as adamant. 

Travellers tell us that in the dry air of Egypt 
the old monuments erected thousands of years 
ago are just as fresh and smooth in outline as if 
the chisel had finished them but yesterday. 
But when some of these relics of the past were 
transported to Paris, in the moist climate of 
France they soon began to change, and atom by 
atom to crumble away. 

Dr. Youmans says : " It has been shown by 
extensive experiments that no species of rock 
whatever will resist the solvent action of water 
impregnated with carbonic acid." — Atlas of Chem- 
istry, p. 50. 

What an instructive lesson! How valuable 
to the farmer! Such knowledge, how exceed- 
ingly useful ! — that in our daily effort to convert 
the earth upon which we tread into a flourishing 
vegetation we can combine and concentrate the 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 37 

forces of nature by covering the ground, that 
moisture and carbonic acid may do a great work 
for man. 

Yes, so vastly important is the benefit that 
may be derived from mulching with green ma- 
nures that we not only see it in the augmentation 
of our crops and the improvement of our till- 
able soil, but it may be observed in the condition 
of the forests around us. Those that have a 
deposit of leaves undisturbed for years about 
their roots make an annual growth much greater 
than those which have been robbed of their 
carpet of dead foliage by the winds or by the 
hand of man. 

"The fallen leaves," says Liebig, "contain 
such trifling quantities of potash and phosphoric 
acid in comparison to their mass that it is diffi- 
cult to account for the injurious consequences 
arising from the raking up and removal of the 
fallen leaves in woods." 

It is difficult only when we forget the condi- 
tions existing in the woods. There the protec- 



38 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

tion of the soil, the perpetual moisture, and the 
carbonic acid constantly forming, work without 
ceasing beneath the mulch, crumbling and mould- 
ering the minerals into an impalpable and solu- 
ble state, ready to be absorbed by plants or trees. 

Liebig admits that "the injury is perhaps 
rather attributable to the fact that the remains 
of leaves and plants constitute a lasting source 
of carbonic acid, which, carried by the rain to 
the deeper layers, must powerfully contribute to 
disintegrate and decompose the earthly par- 
ticles." 

These substantial truths should establish the 
advantage, if not the necessity, of shelter and 
moisture to improve the soil, and also to promote 
the growth of our crops. 

Yet there is no scarcity of water in our fa- 
vored country. 

We have a rainfall of four thousand tons per 
acre every year. But what becomes of it ? 

Professor Johnson says : " According to the 
observations of Dickinson at Abbof s Hill, Hert- 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 39 

fordshire, England, and continued through eight 
years, ninety per cent, of the water falling be- 
tween April 1st and October 1st evaporates 
from the surface of the soil, only ten per cent, 
finding its way into drains laid three and four 
feet deep.^' — How Crops Feed, p. 197. 

This, we presume, is about the amount of 
evaporation in the United States. Then what 
a magnificent prospect is here presented! 

Mighty rivers are pouring, not down the deep 
valleys, but upward from our broad fields to the 
blue sky above us. 

Yes, every square mile of territory sends a 
constant flood, rushing, though invisible, to the 
vast seas in the viewless air. 

Could all the streams from a single State be 
concentrated into one torrent, it would outroar 
Niagara as it dashed against the clouds. 

But what becomes of the poor little ten per 
cent, of water that goes sparkling down the 
ravines to its ocean home? Is it allowed to 
depart in peace? No; the farmer at great ex- 



40 FAEMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

pense cuts channels along the hillside to irrigate 
the sloping plains, and proves that it will pay to 
do it. And then many calculations are made, 
and the time predicted when engines will be used 
to pump back the water again to revive the 
parched and dusty soil. 

All this is done while the ninety per cent, of 
fluid is passing away without an effort made to 
save it. We do not need it all — no, not the 
half of it. We know by covering the land we 
can retain enough for all the wants of vegeta- 
tion. 

To have a vigorous and uninterrupted growth 
we must have moisture in the soil, and we must 
retain it there from rain to rain, or we will 
have a partial failure in our crops. 

Professor Johnson says: "The great deserts 
of the world are not sterile because they can- 
not yield the soil-food required by vegetation, 
but because they^ are destitute of water." 

He also says : " Poor soils give good crops 
in seasons of plentiful and well-distributed rain 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 41 

or when skillfully irrigated, but insufficient 
moisture in the soil is an evil that no supplies 
of plant-food can neutralize/' 

The cause of this will be plain on a mo- 
ment's reflection. Plants can only take up their 
food in a fluid condition, 

Mr. Lawes proved that an acre of wheat 
in five months and eighteen days evaporated 
through its leaves three hundred and fifty-five 
and a quarter tons of water. Now, every drop 
of this water was more or less instrumental in 
transporting a little atom of food from the soil 
to some part of the plant, and when the deposit 
was made, being no longer needed, the water 
passed off through the leaves. 

Liebig also teaches this doctrine. He says : 
" Though the soil be ever so rich in the elements 
of food for plants, still the latter will not grow 
in hot weather if there be a deficiency of moist- 
ure in the soil, for the moisture in the soil is 
the channel through which mineral food has to 
reach the interior of plants." 

4* 



42 FAEMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

The reader who has not been a careful ob- 
server of the changes in nature and the amount 
of rainfall year after year will be very likely 
to suppose that drouth is a plague that very 
seldom visits our much-favored land, and hence 
he may consider it useless to spend much time 
in devising means to remedy the evil. But what 
are the facts? 

The Cultivator says: "Seasons of drouth 
of more or less severity are of frequent oc- 
currence in our climate. Weeks, and even 
months, pass with little or no rain ; the scorch- 
ing glare of the sun drinks up our summer 
brooks and turns the fields to dust or brick- 
like clods beneath its influence. The growing 
crops are shrivelled and dwarfed by the heat." 

This strong picture received an alarming 
confirmation of its truth only a few years ago 
in the new State of Kansas. 'No rain fell dur- 
ing all the spring nor in the first month of 
summer, and there was a total failure in the 
crops of wheat. Dr. Armor, an able farmer 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 43 

in that State, who called on me the same year, 
said he made no attempt to gather the few 
grains of wheat which grew on little stems 
only three inches high, but gave an order 
when he left home in July to plough up the 
fields for reseeding in autumn. 

Indeed, water is so indispensable in the pro- 
cess of vegetation nutrition that only a fortnight 
of dry weather apparently checks the vigor 
and freshness of the green world around us. 



m 



CHAPTER V. 

TILLAGE A MANURE. 

TN estimating the expense of raising green 
crops for manure we must not deduct the 
cost of ploughing and harrowing from the 
value of the green dressing, because tillage is 
manure, and often the very best manure which 
we can apply to many fields, particularly to 
heavy clays. 

Liebig says: "The influence of the me- 
chanical operations of agriculture upon the 
fertility of a soil, however imperfectly the 
earthy particles may be mixed by the process, 
is remarkable, and often borders upon the 
marvellous." 

The truth of this declaration has often been 
established by the experience of many observing 
farmers. Here is one case. 

44 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 45 

"I knew a farmer," says Mechi, "who took 
a good farm wretchedly out of condition and 
full of weeds. He fallowed every acre of it, 
taking care to allow time between each plough- 
ing for the vegetation of the seeds. The result 
was a crop of wheat averaging five and a half 
quarters (forty-four bushels) per acre, and other 
crops in proportion. He was a wise man." 

Now, in connection with this good tillage had 
he put on the field somebody's " nitrogenized 
superphosphate of lime," it is very likely all the 
credit would have been given to it, and we 
might have had his certificate that forty-four 
bushels of wheat per acre were actually obtained 
by using only three hundred pounds on each 
acre of this wonderful fertilizer. 

With such facts before him, we are not sur- 
prised that Mechi says : " Frequent tillage is 
our best and cheapest manure." 

The farm of Joseph Harris has enough of 
clay in the soil to require frequent ploughing 
and harrowing to bring out and unlock its 



46 FARMING WITH GEEEN MANUEES. 



1 



highest productive capacity; hence he has dis- 
covered the great benefit of thorough pulveri- 
zation. He says : " That tillage and manure are 
one and the same thing is a great truth." 

Taking this natural and rational view of the 
subject, it would be very unjust to any green 
crop which is intended for manure to charge 
it with anything but the seed. And this will 
reduce the expense of this mode of improvement 
to a very low figure. 

Harris also says : " On heavy land we have not 
yet been able to dispense with summer fallowing." 

John Johnston, rich as he has made his land, 
is yet in the habit of summer fallowing more 
or less every year. 

His practice has been to top-dress his clover- 
land in the fall, and the next spring to plough 
it up and prepare the land for wheat by plough- 
ing it twice more, with repeated harrowings, 
rolling, etc. In other words, he manures the 
land in the fall and then gives it a good old- 
fashioned summer fallow. 



FAEMING WITH GEEEN MANURES. 47 

Here, you perceive, are three ploughings and 
enough of harrowing to seed the ground with 
two green crops and to turn them in when 
grown without any extra expense. And this 
tillage is never done all at once. It is said that 
there should always be six or eight weeks be- 
tween each ploughing. This method would be 
very accommodating to nearly all kinds of green 
manures. 

Observe how careful Johnston is to neglect 
nothing that will ensure him a large crop of 
wheat. No wonder he often raises fifty bushels 
per acre! We see here that the whole of 
one year is devoted to the preparation of the 
soil. 

He does not confine himself entirely to this 
mode. Under another heading we will show 
that he ploughs in clover in June for wheat. 
And, notwithstanding he makes from five hun- 
dred to a thousand tons of the very best manure 
every year, he does not compel his fields to 
produce a crop of either grass or grain, to be 



48 FAEMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

removed every year. And that is the true 
philosophy of farming — every other year de- 
voted to the entire restoration of the soil. On 
light, sandy land much tillage is not required, 
only to subdue the weeds, and for this pur- 
pose, to assist the plough and hoe, there is 
nothing to be compared to green crops. 

The way these act in the destruction of weeds 
is not as freely acknowledged as it should be, 
because not clearly understood. 

When a quick-growing crop is put in the 
ground, all weed seeds that are on or near the 
surface sprout; and make a feeble growth, but do 
not mature enough to form a blossom or a seed. 
In this way tens of millions of noxious weeds 
will germinate and perish beneath tlie dense 
shadow of a green crop. 



CHAPTEK VI. 

GKEEN MANUEES. 

A LDERMAN MECHI says: "I have no- 
^^ ticed a very money-getting farmer in my 
neighborhood who never keeps any live-stock 
except a couple of cows, and who never buys 
any feeding-stuffs or manures. 

" He keeps his land clean and fertile by plough- 
ing in green crops, which require no hoeing or 
labor, and only one ploughing. I know he 
makes money, for he often purchases land. It is 
the opinion of some knowing- hands that this 
farmer manages to get better profits than his 
neighbors who adopt the ordinary system." 

This testimony comes from one who has no 
superior as an honorable and upright man and 
able farmer. Therefore his words are worthy of 

5 D 49 



60 FAEMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 



1 



a most careful study. Look at the full weight 
and meaning of these expressions : 

"A very money-getting farmer, I know he 
makes money, for he often purchases landJ^ 

There is not a farmer in the wide world who 
would not be glad and happy if his good neigh- 
bor could say that about him. 

Whence comes this undoubted prosperity? 
Does he keep thousands of sheep or hundreds of 
milch-cows of the purest grades ? No. Does he 
sell Essex pigs or choice calves for almost their 
weight in silver? No, nothing of the kind. 

The whole cause of his certain success is told 
in two words — green manures, 

"Well, if one man has accomplished so much 
in this mode of farming, have we no details of 
actual experiments on record to confirm such 
statements? Yes, we have. Here is one of 
great value, because the facts are clearly given 
and are undeniable. 

"In October, 1819,'' said the late Dr. Browne 
of Gorlstone, in Suffolk, " a violent gale of wind 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 51 

drove to this part of the coast an unprecedent- 
ed quantity of seaweeds. These were eagerly 
scrambled for, and, from my greater vicinity to 
the beach, I collected twenty-seven cart-loads — 
each as much as four horses could draw. I 
spread mine fresh and wet upon little more than 
an acre of bean stubble, instantly ploughed it in, 
and dibbled wheat upon it. 

"On the 6th of October I then salted the 
adjoining land with three bushels per acre, ma- 
nured it with fifteen loads of farmyard-dung per 
acre, and dibbled it with wheat on the 15th of 
November. The result was that the seaweeded 
portion gave three times the produce of any 
equal part of the ^eW— Farmer's EncydopcEdiaj 
p. 582. 

How did it happen that this green manure 
produced three times as much wheat as the dung 
from the barnyard? Certainly the nitrogen in 
this weed was available. It could not be other- 
wise. And it is very probable it was much more 
so than that in the yard-manure. 



52 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

Now comes the interesting question : In what 
condition does nitrogen exist in seaweed? In 
the form of albuminoids, there is not a shadow 
of doubt, just as we find it in clover, in Hun- 
garian grass and in all vegetation. And we have 
the authority of Boussingault that tliere is less 
nitrogen in seaweed than in clover, and we 
know there are less phosphoric acid and less potash 
in the former than in the latter plant. 

Then would not the same amount of clover 
or Hungarian grass, with salt, have brought the 
same result? 

And what a vast difference in the cost of these 
plants ! All the doctor could get would only- 
cover a little more than an acre. To obtain any- 
more of it he would have had to buy it. What it 
would cost in England we do not know. In this 
country it is about the price of good manure. 

Col. Waring says that seaweed costs three to 
four dollars, per cord on the beach. While this 
price continues, of course it can only be used to 
advantage by those living near the coast. We 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 53 

advise every one who can raise a good crop of 
clover with bone-dust and plaster to depend on 
it, unless he can get the weed at a much less fig- 
ure than three dollars per cord. 

We feel deeply interested in this experiment 
of Dr. Browne. We hope it will satisfy all 
manure-makers that green plants can be con- 
verted into plant-food without undergoing the 
process of digestion in the stomachs of cattle. 

And, more than this, it should be noticed that 
solution and oxidation can take place in full time 
to furnish all the nourishment required to pro- 
duce a good crop of wheat. 

And that the conversion of vegetable matter 
into manure in the barnyard is not necessary 
may be proved by another careful experiment : 
" The following I know to be a fact. A per- 
son brought up as a farmer in Scotland was sent 
to an estate in one of the Windward Islands to 
improve the system of tillage. Not being able 
to manure a field of six acres that had been much 
exhausted by frequent cropping, he resolved to 

5* 



64 FAKMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

give the pigeon-pea a fair trial ; he accordingly- 
sowed them so thick that in a few months the 
ground was effectually covered to the height of 
six feet. He then cut down this mass of vegeta- 
tion, and immediately buried the whole under 
the large banks that are raised in digging cane- 
holes. His first crop gave him but six hogsheads 
of sugar. Instead of allowing the canes to shoot 
up again, as they will, he planted the pigeon-pea 
and proceeded as before ; this second crop yielded 
twelve hogsheads of sugar, as the benefit of the 
first decayed bushes was then felt. He tried the 
peas a third time, and his crop was eighteen hogs- 
heads. Finding the improvement was so won- 
derful, he resolved on a fourth trial, and the six 
acres yielded twenty-four hogsheads, which is 
considered a first-rate cropy equal to one hundred 
bushels of eorn in this country." — Cultivator j 
1842. 

We believe that corn will take a high position 
among green manures when the best way to use 
it is properly understood. A farmer in Ken- 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 65 

tucky sowed corn on a field of thirty-seven acres, 
and the result was so favorable that he says : 
" Were my only ol>ject the rapid improvement 
of my soil within the shortest space of time, I 
would not seek further or better means than first 
sowing down thick with rye, which I would 
plough under just before the time-^ of ripening, 
to prevent its seeding the ground, and upon 
which I would sow one bushel and a half of 
corn per acre, thus in the same season ploughing 
under a heavy coat of rye and corn, which in the 
short s})ace of twelve months will equal, if not 
surpass, any benefit which can be derived from 
clover in two years." — Cultivator, 1843. 

One more vote in favor of corn I wish to 
record from a good writer and practical farmer. 

S. E. Todd says in his Farmer^ Ilanual : 
"Some farmers contend that clover ploughed 
under is the cheapest manure that can be made. 
It is a great fertilizer ; but I believe that a soil 
can be renovated sooner and at a less expense 
with Indian corn than with clover, because a 



56 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

much larger quantity is turned under yearly of 
corn than of clover. By being expeditious in 
business when a crop of wheat, oats, or barley is 
taken oif in July, as they are many times, if the 
soil is ploughed immediately and Indian corn 
sowed, it will grow large enough in ordinary 
seasons before the autumnal frosts to plough 
under. But when clover is raised no other crop 
can be grown the same season." 

These are very high recommendations in favor 
of green corn. And are they not true? What- 
ever is undoubtedly beneficial as food for animals 
most certainly will be good manure. Why is 
clover so much better than Avheat straw, for animal 
food ? Because it contains more than four times 
as much nitrogen as the straw. And that is the 
very reason why it is so much better for manure. 

AVithout nitrogenous food we can have no flesh. 
Without nitrogen in the soil we can raise but 
little food that will make flesh. In other words, 
nitrogen is an absolute monarch who can never 
be dethroned while life exists upon the globe. 



CHAPTER VII. 

GREEN CORN AS A PROTECTION AND MULCH 
FOR WHEAT. 

/^NE ton of green corn contains six pounds of 
^ nitrogen, two and a half pounds of phos- 
phoric acid, nine pounds of potash, and sixteen 
hundred pounds of water. I find by years of 
experience that it is better to plough in two 
crops of corn in one year than one great heavy 
crop which has grown all the spring and 
summer. 

I have several times turned in from thirty to 
forty-five tons per acre. The great objection to 
this mode was pointed out to me by the plough- 
man. The surface-roots formed such a dense, 
compact, and tough mass along each furrow that 
the plough could not cut them, and it became 

67 



58 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

necessary to run under them ; hence the plough- 
ing was much deeper than desired. 

Two crops in a year, each containing in tops 
and roots about twenty tons per acre, will ma- 
nure the land well. 

Let us compare these with the contents of the 
barnyard. At this rate on twenty acres we may 
have eight hundred tons of green manure. To 
equal this dressing in nitrogen, phosphoric acid, 
and potash will require about five hundred tons 
of stable manure. And that will cost to buy it 
at least five or six hundred dollars, even if you 
could find that much for sale anywhere within 
a reasonable distance of the farm. 

Having ploughed in the first crop of corn 
about the middle of July, what shall we do 
next? I will tell you my plan, and if it does 
not meet your full approval do not follow it. 
Or if doubtful of its value, try it on a small 
plot and you will lose but little if it fails. 

About the first of August, having the land in 
good condition, put in the corn in furrows six or 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 69 

seven feet apart and seven or eight grains to the 
foot. Keep the ground mellow and free from 
weeds with the cultivator while the corn is grow- 
ing. This you ought to do if there was no crop 
to work in preparing the land for wheat. Now, 
when the time comes to sow wheat you will find 
the sown corn from three to four feet high, ac- 
cording to the quality of the soil and the warmth 
and wetness of the season. Then sow the seed 
between the rows and fluke it in. 

Now mark the result. 

No blasting winds in winter nor in the early 
spring can injure the wheat. The drifting snows 
will be retained and help to shelter it. The soil, 
powdered by freezing and drying into fine dust, 
will not be blown away. No droughts will check 
its growth. The ground will always be found 
moist and mellow beneath the shelter. Even the 
rows of corn which may only be a foot high will 
attract the surface-roots of the wheat to banquet 
in the moist and mouldering dust beneath their 
dense shade. And when it decays in the warm 



60 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

days of spring, the rains will leach out its solu- 
ble elements and saturate the soil with them, and 
do more good to the ripening wheat than the 
same amount of green fodder fed to cattle and 
the residue returned to the field. 

To establish these high claims for Indian corn, 
and the great necessity of shelter for winter wheat, 
I will quote a few words from John Johnston, the 
great apostle of agriculture, whom we have al- 
ready presented as the powerful advocate of sur- 
face manuring. 

He says : " Wherever the wheat was exposed 
to the west and north-west it is greatly damaged, 
and I fear considerable of it is ruined. I have 
eighteen acres of Soule's wheat, about five of 
which are sheltered by growing timber from the 
west and north-west. Those five acres look as 
promising as any wheat I ever saw; the other 
part of the field is weak, and I think cannot 
make a full crop, although much better than 
much I see around me. The Maryland wheat 
of which I wrote you was sown immediately, 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 61 

east of the orchard. So far as the shelter of the 
orchard extended it looks pretty well; beyond 
that it is quite feeble. Had my orchard been on 
as high land as the wheat-field, I have no doubt 
it would have sheltered all the wheat-field. 

" I have thought it would pay to plant quick- 
growing timber to shelter fields that are ex- 
posed to the west or north-west. We have no hard 
blows from due north or anywhere easterly to 
injure crops, but often from the west. It was 
only three years ago that half of the wheat in 
the State that was exposed to the north-west and 
west was killed by a hard frost and hard blow 
on the eighth of March. I feel quite sure that 
it would pay to have plantations for shelter 
wherever winter wheat is the staple crop. A 
top-dressing of manure, or even straw, would 
have a tendency to protect it in such seasons as 
this has been. This I know. One inch of straw 
put on after sowing the wheat would have saved 
it, I have no doubt ; and fine manure would be 
still better. Where the wheat is sheltered by our 



62 FAEMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

rail fences it is safe as far as that shelter ex- 
tends, though one would not suppose there was 
much shelter from a rail fence ; but it has been 
enough to protect the wheat on that severe day, 
the 17th of February." — Country Gentlemarij vol. 
23d. 

Probably no man was ever more successful 
in raising wheat, or ever gave the subject a 
more patient investigation, than John Johnston; 
hence these words will be received as instruc- 
tive truths by all who know his exalted 
worth. 

The wheat-plant has many enemies. The 
midge, the mildew, and the Hessian fly too 
often nearly ruin it ; but according to the 
authority of Lewis Bollman of Indiana, 
" Freezing out is perhaps more destructive to the 
wheat-crop than all other misfortunes to which 
it is incident." — Agricultural Beport, 1862. 

S. E. Todd says : " In every wheat-field 
may be seen in spring plants growing in little 
hollows sheltered by lumps or banks from the 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 63 

cold wind, but enjoying the benefit of the sun's 
rays. The difference between the growth of 
these plants and others which have not the ben- 
efit of shelter is remarkable." — Wieat Oulturist, 
p. 212. 

Again he says, on page 226 : " The more 
we can protect the wheat-plants from piercing 
winds and intense cold, the better crops of 
grain we may expect to raise.'' 

In corroboration of these statements we 
have seen reports of stumps in the Western 
States saving little patches of wheat all over 
the field. 

Sidney Weller of North Carolina was in the 
habit of scraping up the pine leaves in the 
forest and covering his wheat in the fall with 
much care and trouble. He says: "By four 
years' trial I have now found it always benefits 
the wheat — sometimes increasing the product 
one-half at least — and even guards the clover 
against the misfortune of burning out in hot, 
dry summers." — Oultivatory 1843. 



64 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

What a contrast between the labor of spread- 
ing straw or pine leaves upon a large field, 
and the ease and rapidity by which you can 
roll down a luxuriant growth of green corn 
where it grew! 

This method of raising wheat will not pre- 
vent you from using stable manure as a top- 
dressing. 

Any time before sowing the wheat, or after- 
ward if you wish to do it, you can drive 
between the rows of corn and spread the ma- 
nure from the wagons. You remember that 
Gurney says that manure does six times more 
good under a mulch than when not covered 
with anything. 

In the first edition of this work the farmer 
w^as advised to roll down in the fall the corn 
which had been planted in drills to protect the 
wheat. Careful experiments since that time have 
proved to my satisfaction that this is not neces- 
sary, and that it is better to leave the corn 
standing till spring and then roll it down. 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 65 

Since the discovery that drilled wheat is 
seldom injured by freezing, and that careful 
rolling of light land is another great source 
of protection, it is only in very exposed sit- 
uations and in the Northern and Western 
States that you will have to resort to other 
means to secure an ample shelter to your fields 
of grain. 

It is very probable when planting corn for 
this purpose that it would be better to have the 
rows wide enough apart, that the drill may be 
used in putting in the wheat. I suppose that 
six or seven feet would be about the distance 
required ; however, this is a matter for every 
one to decide for himself. Another point will 
need more careful experiments to work out 
the right number. That is, how thick to sow 
the corn. 

Would it be better to scatter in the furrow 
fifteen or twenty, or only six or eight, grains to 
the foot in preparing a shelter and protection 
for the crop of wheat ? 

6* E 



CHAPTER VIII. 

HUNGARIAN MILLET. 

/^NE ton of Hungarian millet in blossom 
^^ contains twenty pounds of nitrogen, two 
and a half pounds of phosphoric acid, seven- 
teen pounds of potash, and thirteen hundred 
and sixty pounds of water. When the clover- 
seed which was sown among the wheat has 
failed to grow, you had better seed the field 
in the spring with Hungarian grass; that is, 
if you intend to alternate a green and grain 
crop in succession. 

As soon as all danger is over from frosts 
sow one bushel per acre of the Hungarian seed 
when the ground is in good and mellow con- 
dition, and then roll it in. As soon as this 
crop comes in blossom, sow over it a half bushel 

66 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 67 

more of seed per acre. Then with your mow- 
ing-machine cut it down and leav6 it on the 
ground. Being cut so early, it will sprout up, 
and with the last sowing you will have two 
crops growing together, and, being shaded by 
the first, will be equal to it in weight and value. 

The bushel and a half of seed per acre will 
cost about three dollars. 

These two crops of green manure will make 
together twenty-five tons per acre, and this 
will amount on a field of twenty acres to five 
hundred tons. Then this green dressing will 
cost twelve cents per ton. The ten thousand 
pounds of nitrogen in it will cost less than one 
cent per pound. 

Let us compare this with barnyard manure. 
It will take one thousand tons to furnish as 
much nitrogen as we have in the twenty acres 
of Hungarian grass. If you can buy the ma- 
nure and haul it home and spread it for one 
dollar and fifty cents per ton, it will cost you 
fifteen hundred dollars. 



68 FARMING WITH GEEEN MANURES. 

Peruvian guauo contains two hundred and eigh- 
ty pounds of nitrogen per ton, and at the old price 
of sixty dollars it would cost nearly twenty-one 
hundred and sixty dollars to obtain as much 
nitrogen in that way as we get for sixty dol- 
lars in the twenty acres of Hungarian grass. 

Nitrate of soda is another highly-concentrated 
manure, because it contains three hundred pounds 
of nitrogen per ton. But I do not know where 
you can buy the pure article for less than nine- 
ty dollars for two thousand pounds ; therefore 
it will cost you three thousand dollars to get 
as much nitrogen as we obtain for sixty dollars 
in twenty acres of green millet. 

After looking at the subject through these 
calculations, does it not seem exceedingly 
strange that English, and even American, farm- 
ers will purchase nitrate of soda and sow from 
one hundred to two hundred and fifty pounds 
per acre on their wheat? 

Why will they do it? Because they want 
available nitrogen. They want it in such a condi- 



FARMING WITH GREEIQ MANURES. 69 

tion that it can be taken up by the plants the 
moment it is sown. Green manures must decay : 
a complete decomposition is necessary to convert 
the nitrogen into nitric acid and ammonia. 

But let us have patience ; there never was a pile 
of hay or grain or grass that would not rot 
down, and in reasonable time make manure. 

But how shall we hasten this decay to the best 
advantage ? 

By keeping the material upon the surface. 
Dr. Yoelcker discovered that hay or new-mown 
grass lost more than half of its richest elements 
when left on the field and exposed to leaching 
rains for a short time. 

Unless the soil is very loose and sandy, vege- 
table matter will not decay when ploughed in 
as soon as it will upon the surface. 

Combustion is a rapid condition of decay, 
and the whole process of decay is a slow com- 
bustion — in both cases a union of oxygen with 
carbon and hydrogen. Cover your fire with 
ashes or earth and it will not burn as brightly 



70 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

as when uncovered. Bury half-rotten manure 
or straw or wood so deep that air will be en- 
tirely excluded, and no further decay can take 
place. 

Stirring the soil promotes the slow burning 
(decay) of the vegetable matter in the ground. 
A pile of clover hay may lie for years appa- 
rently but little changed by decomposition. But 
a careful examination will disclose the fact that 
nearly all its valuable constituents have been 
carried into the soil. The shell remains, but the 
oyster has been extracted. 

Minute division favors oxidation. A sub- 
stance dissolved by water and deposited on the 
soil has its atoms in a state of great refinement, 
and will soon be converted by a chemical change 
into available plant-food. Hence the unquestion- 
able advantages of cutting down green crops in 
midsummer and leaving them to cover the 
ground as long as possible. At the same time 
another green one may be encouraged to grow 
up through the mulch. 



CHAPTER IX. 

GREEN CLOVER. 

/^NE ton of green clover contains twelve 

^ pounds of nitrogen, two and a half pounds 

of phosphoric acid, nine pounds of potash, and 

sixteen hundred pounds of water. 

We may by good management have fifteen 

tons by the middle of June to cut down or 

plough in for wheat. If left on the surface as 

a green dressing, a second crop will grow up, 

and the two together will amount in tops and 

roots by the middle of August to twenty-five 

tons per acre. That will be five hundred tons 

on a field of twenty acres. This amount of 

green manure will contain six thousand pounds 

of nitrogen. 

One peck of seed per acre, at ten dollars a 

71 



72 FAEMINQ WITH GREEN MANURES. 

bushel, will make the nitrogen cost less than one 
cent per pound and the green clover ten cents 
per ton. That is fifty dollars for five hundred 
tons of green manure. 

Now, it will take six hundred tons of barnyard 
manure to furnish as much nitrogen as we get in 
the twenty acres of clover. If you buy stable 
manure and haul it home and spread it at a cost 
of one dollar and a half per ton, you pay nine 
hundred dollars for a pile that contains no more 
nitrogen than we can obtain for fifty dollars. 

To this you may reply that when we purchase 
manure it is all a clear gain, but that the clover 
only contains what was already in the soil and 
air. This would be very plausible reasoning — 
indeed, it would have great weight — were it not 
an established fact, as we have already shown, 
that land does not retain its nitric acid, but 
allows the dissolving waters to carry it off al- 
most constantly. 

With this knowledge accepted as a great truth, 
the careful farmer will always employ a trust- 



FAEMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 73 

worthy collector of Nature's manurial treasures. 
Among these he will find by long experience that 
red clover stands in the highest rank. 

It will always be profitable to raise clover in 
every field on the farm whenever other crops 
will permit it. And whenever the crop is not 
heavy we should assist the land by a free use 
of bone-dust and plaster or super-phosphate of 
lime. 

"Were all the merits of red clover emblazoned 
in letters of gold on a large canvas, it would 
fail to convey to the mind a full estimate of its 
true value. 

The Hon. George Geddes says : " The agri- 
culture of Onondaga county is based on the red 
clover plant. It is used for pasture, for hay, and 
for manure. Strike this plant out of existence, 
and a revolution would follow that would make 
it necessary for us to learn everything anew in 
regard to cultivating our lands." 

Joseph Harris says : " Raise your own clover- 
seed, and sow it with an unsparing hand. You 



74 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

cannot raise too much clover. It is the grand 
renovating crop of America.'' 

Allen says of clover in his American Farm 
Book, ^^ It is as a fertilizer, however, that it is so 
decidedly superior to other crops. In addition to 
the advantages before enumerated, the facility 
and economy of its cultivation, the great amount 
yielded, and lastly the convenient form it offers 
for covering with the plough, contribute to place it 
far above any other species of vegetation for this 
purpose. All the grains and roots do well after 
clover ; and wheat especially, which follows it, is 
more generally free from disease than when sown 
with any other manure. The introduction of 
clover and lime in connection has carried up the 
price of many extensive tracts of land from ten 
to fifty dollars per acre, and has enabled the oc- 
cupant to raise large crops of wheat where he 
could get only small crops of rye; and it has 
•frequently increased his crop of wheat threefold 
where it had been previously an object of atten- 
tion." 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 75 

In 1843 Tlie Cultivator said : " We know an 
extensive farmer, and a most successful one, who 
avers that he can manure his farm cheaper with 
clover than he can with manure, could he have 
it for only the carting from his yard and spread- 
ing." 

Among experienced farmers a great diversity 
of opinion exists regarding the most profitable 
way of using clover. Some can hardly be in- 
duced to plough it in, or anything else which can 
be used as forage ; among these we may number 
Joseph Harris, yet even he says: "In certain 
circumstances it may be better to plough under 
the clover instead of feeding it to stock on the 
farm. It is a quicker way of enriching the soil." 
— Genesee Farmer ^ 1863. 

Now, is not this a great concession ? He is such 
an eloquent advocate for feeding every straw that 
I almost thought if he were to see an ox eating 
his jacket he would give him his coat also. 

Ten years after this was written he speaks 
still more favorably upon this subject in Walks 



76 FAEMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

and Talks J No. 116: "'We shall have to go 
back to the old-fashioned plan of ploughing 
under clover/ says the deacon ; and, as usual, 
he is more than half right." 

What a great satisfaction it would be to see 
the strong and powerful pen of Joseph Harris 
engaged in full faith in defence of green 
manuring ! 

Here is another example showing how little 
it cost to enrich land with clover : 

D. D. T. Moore sowed clover-seed with 
barley, and the next spring, on the 8th of June, 
ploughed in the clover for corn. He says, 
to ascertain the weight of the croj) of clover 
thus turned under, he cut a square foot of the 
sod, shook off the soil, and found the weight of 
clover and its roots to be two pounds and a 
quarter. This would give forty-nine tons per 
acre. 

Hence he obtained five hundred and eighty- 
eight pounds of nitrogen for one dollar and a 
half, the reported cost of the seed per acre ! 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 77 

Now mark — and remember well this astound- 
ing fact — that we have a green manure which 
costs but a trifle over three cents per ton, and 
which is more valuable, ton for ton, than stable 
manure ! And not a cart nor horse nor fork of 
any kind was required to spread it evenly over 
the whole field! 

When I first read this account in the Cultivator 
for June, 1854, I was inclined to suppose that 
there was some error in the report. 

That such a mass of clover could grow in less 
than fourteen months, and part of that time in 
the winter and with barley, seemed beyond all 
common experience. But after this, most fortu- 
nately, I came across the following careful esti- 
mate of the amount of vegetable matter which 
can grow upon an acre, and that reconciled me 
entirely as to the correctness of Mr. Moore's 
statement : 

The Hon. George Geddes says: "Professor 
Kedzie, of the Michigan Agricultural College 
at Lansing, took a square foot of June grass-turf 



78 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

and washed away all the soil in running water, 
and then weighed the roots and surface grass to 
determine the amount of green manurial matter 
usually contained in a heavy green sward, and 
found it to be five pounds to the square foot, or 
at the rate of more than 100 tons to the acre." 

It certainly is unnecessary to dwell any longer 
on clover as a means of enriching the soil. 

But when and how to use it will require some 
attention. 

Will it ferment and become sour when turned 
in in a green state ? Some farmers say it will. 

For thirty years John Johnston ploughed it in 
about the middle of June. How is it that we 
hear nothing from him about souring the soil ? 

The Hon. George Geddes says it is ready to 
plough in as soon as it comes to full maturity. 
Now, without any exaggeration we may say 
that there is not another person in the United 
States who has had such a long and large expe- 
rience in the use of clover as a green manure as 
this distinguished farmer of New York. 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 79 

He writes to the Tribune that he has on his 
farm in Central New York a field which from 
1799 to 1873 has had no manure except clover 
grown on it and ploughed under, and that wheat, 
corn, oats, barley, meadow, and pasture have been 
regularly taken from the land in five years' ro- 
tation, the closing crop being winter wheat, with 
timothy and clover sowed. The clover has been 
regularly treated with gypsum for fifty years. 
He has particularly noticed it of late years, and 
says the land is more fertile now than it was twen- 
ty-three years ago. 

Yet we hear nothing from him of any injury 
to the soil from this lifelong use of clover as a 
green manure. But such has not been the case 
everywhere. 

Dr. Joseph Henderson of Mifflin co., Penn- 
sylvania, says : " Experience here is adverse to 
turning down green crops as fertilizers, and few, 
I believe, have repeated the experiment. In two 
instances in my immediate neighborhood wherein 
heavy crops of clover were ploughed in, in full 



80 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

bloom, upon land of excellent quality, the im- 
mediate effect, at least, was highly pernicious, as 
evinced in an almost total failure of the suc- 
ceeding crop of wheat." — Agricultural Reporty 
1864. 

Here is another case from the same report: 
Joshua S. Keller says, " Clover, after growing up 
a few years, ought to be turned under when fully 
ripe with a good plough. Let those who advocate 
the green state do so to their hearts' content. I 
have the experience of both the dead-ripe and the 
young green, and would by no means suffer the 
latter if I could prevent it." 

And here is another from an able writer whose 
name I have forgotten : " But powerful as are the 
effects of green crops ploughed in, it is the experi- 
ence of some practical men that one crop allowed 
to perfect itself and then die where it grew, and 
then turned in dry, is superior to three turned in 
green." 

What can be the cause of this ? The crop that 
is left to ripen and fall where it grew shades. 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 81 

protects, and mulches the soil. And it may be 
that half its substance is leached out and eu riches 
the surface with liquid manure. 

If this is the case, certainly no better way could 
be adopted to use clover to improve the land. 
Yet I would modify this treatment by following 
the advice of Joseph Harris, that is, to cut 
down the clover when in full bloom, and let the 
second crop grow up through it, and also cut the 
second when ready, and let it decay a while before 
ploughing for wheat. 

This mode would effectually head off all weeds 
that might be among the clover. But with re- 
gard to the crop becoming sour if turned in green, 
that is another matter. If you are careful to plough 
in the green dressing very shallow, and the soil is 
mellow and loamy, there will be no danger of 
acetic fermentation. If you are afraid of it, 
sow lime or salt over it before ploughing, and 
that will prevent it and be a benefit to the 
wheat. 

Clover has but one fault. In its infancy it is 

F 



82 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

very tender and feeble, and cannot always stand 
the atmospheric changes. It may be that we are 
to blame. We may not know w^hen to sow the 
seed to ensure a perfect germination. One farmer 
will tell you to sow very early, even on the last 
fall of snow ; another will say. Wait till May ; 
and some will declare that they never fail when 
they sow in June. Yet failures will take place. 

In 1870, Joseph Harris writes : " Nearly all 
the spring-sown timothy and clover in this 
section is a comparative failure, and farmers are 
ploughing their wheat-stubble and going to sow 
wheat again." 

He sowed about fifty acres, and says: "It is 
apparently an absolute failure." 

In 1872, Mr. Straub of Maryland wrote to 
Harris that " for the last two years the clover 
crop has proved almost a 'total failure." 

This is a serious matter, because it is always 
a double loss : you lose a crop of clover and 
all the money invested in the seed. 

Have we no remedy ? There is but one cause 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 83 

for all this trouble — the want of moisture in 
the surface soil. 

Sidney Weller of North Carolina found that 
when he covered his wheat with pine leaves, even 
on his sandy soil, the clover never failed, no mat- 
ter whether he sowed the seed in the fall or in 
the spring. 

When the wheat is protected with green corn, 
as recommended in Chapter YII., the clover will 
find a moist bed to grow in all the year. 

If you wish to raise clover independent of any 
other crop, sow it with buckwheat in the spring, 
and when the buckwheat is in blossom cut it 
down, and it will mulch the clover and ensure a 
good crop. 



CHAPTER X. 

GREEN RYE. 

/\NE ton of green rye contains eleven pounds 
^^ of nitrogen, four and a half pounds of phos- 
phoric acid, twelve and a half pounds of potash, 
and fourteen hundred pounds of water. 

When we compare it with barnyard manure 
its great value as a green dressing becomes appa- 
rent. I have seen fifteen tons per acre growing 
on the 8th of May, and this was ascertained by 
careful measurement. Then on a field of twenty 
acres you could have three hundred tons of ma- 
nure at very little expense, all evenly spread on 
the ground and ready to plough in. 

The most careful analysis is worth nothing if 
green rye is not equal, ton for ton, to stable ma- 
nure, with one small exception. The latter has 

84 



FAEMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 85 

half a pound of phosphoric acid per ton more 
than the former. 

Now, what will it cost you to cover a field of 
twenty acres with three hundred tons of manure ? 
Can you buy it, haul it, and spread it for less than 
four hundred and fifty dollars? 

The rye will cost you for the seed one dollar 
per bushel, and two bushels per acre will be forty 
dollars. That is, it will cost more than twelve 
times as much to improve with barnyard manure, 
at one dollar and a half per ton, than to use 
green rye. 

The tillage always pays for itself. 

And remember this : the rye grows at a time 
when you cannot use the ground for any other 
crop but wheat. 

Mr. Eoot of Illinois regards this fact of the 
very highest importance in using this grain as a 
green manure. 

Besides this great merit, it protects the field 
from washing during the winter. 

It absorbs the soluble minerals and the am- 

8 



86 FAEMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

mouia and nitric acid that might under other 
conditions be lost. 

For barnyard manure you can claim no supe- 
riority over this plant but its partial decomposi- 
tion. It is more available, because a part of it 
is oxidized. 

The rye must undergo this change before its 
albuminoids can be of use to growing vegetation. 
But look at the ample time that it has to decom- 
pose, and then you cannot but acknowledge its 
value. 

It may be ploughed in for a crop of corn, or 
may be cut down just as it blossoms and left as a 
mulch on the ground. A second crop will then 
grow up nearly as large as the first, and may then 
be ploughed in, and Hungarian grass or white 
mustard or buckwheat or green corn be sown, 
and make a third crop for turning in for wheat. 
If corn should be the third crop, I should prefer 
to use it as a mulch, as already explained in 
Chapter YII. 

J. B. Root of Rockford, 111., writes in the 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 87 

American Agriculturist, 1875: "The labor of 
applying evenly forty loads of manure per acre 
is considerable. All this is done more evenly 
by the green crop. Seed and labor together cost 
me but three dollars and a half per acre. I can- 
not say that it adds as much fertility to the soil 
as forty loads of manure, but I do say that in 
our droughty seasons it produces as great an in- 
crease of crop as do forty two-horse loads of good 
manure. It certahily pays to practise it, and to 
practise it largely, even on the land well supplied 
with stable manure." 

Every one acquainted with the Writings of 
Joseph Harris for the last twenty-five years will 
suppose, of course, that clover is the only green 
crop which could obtain such a high recommen- 
dation from a practical farmer. 

But such is not the case. Mr. Root makes but 
little use of it. He says : " Rye has been my 
most profitable green manure." 

Harris thought it just as useless to plough in 
cereal crops for manure as to attempt to carry 



88 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

buttermilk in a basket. He believed they spilled 
the most of their nitrogen while growing. He 
has now changed his views, and is conscien- 
tious enough to acknowledge that for twenty-five 
years he was in error. 

He now writes : " I thought then that wheat, 
barley, oats, corn, and other cereals during their 
growth gave off nitrogen into the atmosphere, 
while clover, peas, beans, vetches, and turnips 
retained all the nitrogen they got from the soil 
and from dews and rains. The theory was sim- 
ple and plausible, and the practical deduction 
safe and sound. But more recent investigations 
failed to sustain this view." 



CHAPTER XL 

GREEN BUCKWHEAT. 

ONE ton of green buckwheat contains eight 
pounds of nitrogen, three pounds of phos- 
phoric acid, and eleven pounds of potash. 

It stands very high as a green manure. Two 
large crops can be raised in one year to plough in 
for wheat. In 1875 I raised in fifty-one days 
twenty-seven tons per acre of green buckwheat. 
It was sown on the 14th of July, and cut and 
weighed on the 3d of September. 

Besides its value as a manure, it will make 
excellent hay. In July you should make an es- 
timate of the forage on hand to keep the stock 
through the winter, and if you need more, in- 
stead of cutting a second crop of clover, better 

sow one or more acres of buckwheat and top dress 
s* • 89 



90 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

it with plaster and bone-dust or super-phosphate, 
unless the land is already good ; and before the 
equinoctial storms of September you may have 
from the buckwheat three or four tons of good 
hay per acre. It contains two-thirds as much 
nitrogen as clover hay, and more phosphoric 
acid and more potash. 

If wet weather should prevent you from mak- 
ing it into hay, you can plough it in for wheat, 
and no loss will occur. 

Even buckwheat straw, after you have thrashed 
out the grain, should be saved for hay. It con- 
tains four times as much nitrogen, four times as 
much potash, and three times as much phosphoric 
acid, as wheat straw. 

John Johnston once said to Harris: "I should 
have made more money if I had found out the 
value of straw for fodder fifteen years earlier." 

He alludes, of course, to the straw from his 
immense crops of wheat. 

No wonder farmers cannot raise corn after 
buckwheat, when seed and straw have all been 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 91 

removed! They say it poisons the land. So does 
a check on the bank when it removes all your de- 
posits. But plough the money into the bank, and 
it will antidote all the poison. 

That buckwheat is beneficial as a green dress- 
ing the following may be relied upon : 

" We cannot," says the editor of the Theatre of 
Agriculture^ " too much recommend, after our old 
and constant practice, the employment of this 
precious plant as a manure. It is certainly the 
most economical and convenient the farmer can 
employ." 

The American Agriculturist for 1867, p. 253, 
says of buckwheat: "It affords one of the most 
valuable green manure crops to be used on light 
leachy lands, for with 100 to 150 pounds of good 
guano, or three to five hundredweight of bone- 
dust, a heavy crop of manure may be produced on 
almost any soil." 

It also says, on p. 285 : " When this grain is 
sowed the 1st of August it will be in condition 
to plough in for a rye crop the last of September. 



92 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

We have seen rye taken from a field four years in 
succession, with no other manure than buckwheat 
turned in at the time of sowing the rye. There 
was a constant increase in the yield of the grain, 
showing the benefit of the green crop." 

Here we see what a number of green crops may 
be turned in for wheat every other year. Of one 
fact we may be certain — that no person ever made 
money by raising small crops of wheat. Hence 
every effort should be made to prepare the ground 
and enrich it, so as to ensure a large crop of grain. 
The cheapest and best way to accomplish this is 
to plough in three or four green crops in one year 
for wheat. And in this way it may be done : 
Where the clover has failed, as soon as the wheat 
is ofP in July plough and sow rye and buckwheat 
together. When the latter is in full blossom cut 
it down on the rye. Here we have two crops on 
the field all winter. One acts as a mulch to the 
other, and both together protect and improve the 
soil. By the middle of May the rye will be in 
blossom, and should be carefully cut down, and 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 93 

then a second will spring up, and in six or eight 
weeks may be as large as the first. Then plough 
all in together, and by the first of August put in 
sowed corn as a mulch for wheat, as directed in 
Chapter YII. 

Take notice of this remarkable fact — that we 
have four green crops, and the wheat actually 
put in the ground, with only two ploughings. 

If your soil should be a heavy clay, and you 
wish to plough it three times, the rye may be 
turned in about the middle of May, and Hunga- 
rian grass or some other quick-growing plant be 
sown for the third crop. 

To conclude this subject, let us examine the 
relative value of green buckwheat compared with 
barnyard manure. In the three crops which you 
can plough in between two crops of wheat it will 
be safe to estimate them all together at forty-five 
tons per acre. 

Then on a field of twenty acres you will have 
900 tons, containing 7200 pounds of nitrogen, 
1700 pounds of phosphoric acid, and 9900 pounds 



94 FARMING WITH GEEEN MANURES. 

of potash. Now, it will take 720 tons of stable 
manure to yield as much nitrogen as we get in our 
triple crop of buckwheat, and nearly as much for 
the phosphoric acid and potash. If the last crop 
of buckwheat should absorb any material from 
the mouldering ruins of the first, it may be pos- 
sible that we only gain from the soil about two- 
thirds of the amount above given. But that will 
be amply sufficient for a good crop of wheat. 



CHAPTER XII. 

WHITE MUSTAKD. 

/\NE ton of white mustard contains nine pounds 
^ of nitrogen. In two months it will produce 
fifteen tons per acre of green manure. Two crops 
may be raised from May to September, to be 
ploughed in for wheat. On a field of twenty 
acres you may have 600 tons at one-tenth the cost 
of stable manure, and nearly equal to it in value, 
ton for ton. 

Joseph Harris says : " On sandy soils that are 
not specially enriched by summer fallowing mus- 
tard could undoubtedly be used to advantage as a 
green manure for winter wheat or for Indian corn 
the next spring." 

Again he writes : " The experience of the heavy- 
land farmers of Suffolk is in favor of sowing about 

95 



96 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

a peck of white mustard on the long fallows in 
August or early in September, and ploughing in 
the herbage about six or eight weeks from the 
time of sowing. The effect upon the barley crop 
is considered by practical farmers as equal to half 
a coat of farmyard dung obtained at a cost of 
2s. 6d. for the seed. Upon a clay loam, the mus- 
tard being sown after peas and ploughed in for 
wheat, the difference, in the crop was visible to the 
eye at a considerable distance from the field. At 
harvest the wheat where the mustard had been 
ploughed in was six inches higher, and ripened 
ten days sooner, than wheat on adjoining lands 
where no mustard had been sown, but otherwise 
treated in a similar manner." — Walks and TalJcs, 
No. 100. 

We see by these extracts that white mustard 
may be used to advantage on either sandy or 
heavy land. 

It is also stated by Harris that super-phos- 
phate will greatly stimulate the growth of mus- 
tard. 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 97 

If the seed were cheaper I would frequently 
use it, and sow two or three crops for wheat. 

I had fifteen tons per acre of white mustard 
ploughed in early in July, and had the lot seeded 
down in buckwheat, and when it was in blossom 
had it turned in for wheat. The crop was nearly 
equal to another field which produced twenty- 
four bushels per acre, and which had been 
dressed with good stable manure and super-phos- 
phate of lime. 

9 a 



CHAPTER XIII. 

TURKTPS. 

ONE ton of turnips contains four pounds of 
nitrogen, one and a half pounds of phos- 
phoric acid, six and a half pounds of potash, and 
1818 pounds of water. One ton of turnip-leaves 
contains seven pounds of nitrogen. Twenty tons 
per acre are considered a good crop. The tops 
weigh about eight tons. The two together fur- 
nish 136 pounds of nitrogen. 

It will require nearly seven tons of Hungarian 
grass, or eleven and a half tons of green clover, 
or thirteen and a half tons of barnyard manure, 
to yield as much nitrogen as this crop of turnips. 

Yet we cannot obtain as much benefit from 
these manures as the English farmer gets from 
his turnips. The reason may be, we do not be- 

98 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 99 

stow as much labor and material on our green 
crops as he does to make them available. 

Alderman Mechi says : " It seems very un- 
gracious that when you have grown a splendid 
crop of turnips at an expense of thirty-five to 
fifty dollars the acre, the sheep are to consume it, 
leaving you nothing but the price of the hay and 
cake you gave them with it ; but it is a system 
that can't be avoided until you find some cheaper 
source of manure." 

That is, you may sell the fat sheep for enough 
over their original cost to pay for the hay and 
cake you gave them. But how can they afford to 
give so much for the nitrogen in the turnips ? Is 
it because the turnips are eaten on the ground, and 
that makes all the nitrogen available ? And be- 
sides this, the manure from the cake and hay and 
phosphates is all deposited on the soil. No 
liquids are lost. 

Mechi also writes : " At this moment (March, 
1857) you cannot buy lean sheep under seven 
shillings per stone of eight pounds (net dead 



100 FAEMING WITH GKEEN MANURES. 

weight), whilst the price of fat sheep is only six 
shillings per stone ; so that probably those who 
purchase lean stock now will have to give away 
their root and green crops without return, except 
the manure." 

The fact is, it takes so much labor, so much 
bone-dust or super-phosphate or other manures, 
and so much time, to grow a good crop of turnips 
and to feed them on the land, so that none of the 
liquid shall be lost, that we in our cold climate 
must look for a cheaper source of nitrogen than 
by raising turnips to feed to sheep or cattle. We 
must give more attention and more labor and 
more manure to other green crops to secure a 
heavy yield, and then they will show their power 
whether we plough them in or leave them on the 
surface, or feed them to animals and save all the 
residue. 

The profit from keeping all kinds of stock in 
England is very little indeed. 

Mechi says : " What the turnips cost to grow 
is another affair; but the price singularly con- 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 101 

firms Mr. Lawes's experiments, that one ton of 
turnips (without any other food) only produced 
five pounds, net dead weight, of mutton." 

This is a positive proof that all the labor and 
expense bestowed upon this plant is directed to 
one great and grand object — the production of 
nitrogen. Without it, they know that they 
cannot raise large crops of wheat. 

" Mr. Lawes's experiments furnish correct data 
on this subject, and show that after paying for 
purchased food nothing was left for the turnips, 
although we know they cost ten shillings per ton 
or more." — Mechi. 

That is, two dollars and a half for a ton of 
turnips that will make five pounds of mutton, 
which they sell at eighteen and three-quarter 
cents per pound. 

A good English farmer once said to Joseph 

Harris : " Ensure me a crop of turnips, and I 

will ensure you every other crop in the rotation. 

The rotation is — first, turnips ; second, barley 

seeded with clover ; third, clover ; fourth, wheat ; 
9* ' 



102 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

and then turnips again ; and so on. A good crop 
of turnips eaten on the land by sheep means good 
barley and good clover. Good clover means good 
wheat. The turnips and . the clover may not 
yield much profit, but the extra yield of barley 
and wheat more than compensates for the great 
labor and expense bestowed on the turnip crop." 

Here is the whole secret of the great success 
of the English farmer. A green crop always 
comes in between two grain crops. 

With bone-dust or super-phosphate of lime we 
can raise turnips as well as they can in England, 
and we need not feed them to sheep; we can 
plough them in, and get more manure than they 
would yield if eaten by animals. Then what 
else is needed ? We miss the nitrogen from the 
oil-cake. If more is required, we must make 
that up some other way. Is not nitrate of soda 
as cheap as oil-cake ? If not, then let us plough 
in two green crops or top dress the wheat with 
good barnyard manure. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

BAENYAED MANUEE. 

/^NE ton of barnyard manure contains ten 
^^ pounds of nitrogen, five pounds of phos- 
phoric acid, twelve and a half pounds of potash, 
and 1500 pounds of water. 

It may be that you live so near to some town 
or city that you can get manure for one dollar 
and a half per ton, and can haul it home and 
spread it for fifty cents a load. 

Now, as we have more faith in clover than in 
any other green manure, let us compare these two 
together. You must put 360 tons of manure 
on the twenty acres to get as much nitrogen as 
we have in the single crop of clover. That will 
cost you $540 for the manure, and that will be 
nearly twenty cents per pound for the nitrogen. 

103 



104 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

I say " nearly," for we must allow something for 
the minerals. But how much? Harris says 
that "all the mineral matter in a ton of barn- 
yard manure could be purchased for twenty-five 
cents.'' 

This is too low an estimate for manure that has 
never been leached by rain, but may apply very 
well to any that has been exposed to the weather 
all summer and has lost by drainage nearly all 
its soluble elements. 

Great care should be observed in purchasing 
manure. Its value depends entirely on the kind 
of material of which it is made and the care be- 
stowed upon it afterward. If it has lain in a 
dry place, and become fire-fanged and white and 
mouldy, and so light that it feels on your fork 
like a bunch of dry leaves, it is hardly worth 
hauling home at any price; and if it is made of 
nothing but straw, although it may look well, do 
not pay much for it. 

But if preserved in a cellar or covered yard, 
and been kept moist with urine or drainage 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 105 

from the yard while rotting, and the animals 
while making it have been fed two or three times 
a day on grain or bran or oil-cake and good hay, 
and the pile is well concentrated by decay, then 
it is good manure and worth hauling several miles 
to your home. 

On Plumgrove Farm I have all the liquid which 
settles in a tank at the lowest corner of the yard 
pumped up and sprinkled over the manure under 
cover, and the process of decomposition goes on so 
regularly that it could not be made better any oth- 
er way. Yet with all the care we can bestow upon 
it, it seems almost impossible to save all the liquid 
in the stables. 

Barns are not properly constructed for this pur- 
pose. Stalls should be eight or ten feet high from 
the floor to the joists above, so that three feet 
deep of manure may be left under the animals 
all the time. And when the stables will hold no 
more they may be cleaned out to the bottom, and 
then re-bedded with one foot of sods and turf, and 
a light coat of straw or any kind of litter over 



106 FAEMING WITH GEEEN MANURES. 

them. This way is nearly as good, and not so 
costly, as gutters behind the stalls to carry off the 
urine. 

When in search of manure in the village or 
town near you, the most important question is 
not what kind of animals produce it, but how 
much and what kind of feed has been given to 
them. Joseph Harris says that one bushel of 
Indian corn will make twenty cents' worth of ma- 
nure. And Lawes considers the residue from one 
ton of clover hay worth over nine dollars. 

Now, when you find a pile under cover, and a 
reliable man assures you that it was made by feed- 
ing 200 bushels of corn and ten tons of clover 
hay, with a moderate amount of straw for bedding, 
then you may safely offer him two dollars per ton 
for it. 

It will not do to buy everything that is called 
manure. Let me give you an example that is 
worth remembering. 

Col. Waring of Ogden Farm says : " As I drive 
along the road I daily meet able-bodied men 



FARMING WITH GEEEN MANURES. 107 

crawling along beside snail-like ox-teams with 
loads of stained straw from the private stables in 
which the summer residents of Newport keep their 
horses 'up to their knees' in litter. The cart 
holds about a cord of the stuff (128 cubic feet), 
for which fiv€ dollars or more have been paid in 
town, and to get which occupies the best part of a 
day's labor of man and team.'' 

You see he will not even call this manure. 
What a Conrad-like sneer must have curled his 
proud lip as he inspected these loads of " stuff j^ 
as he calls them ! 

Is it any wonder that our wisest men declare 
that the art of agriculture is only in its infancy ? 



CHAPTER XV. 

FEEDING GRAIN FOR MANURE. 

'I /TANY farmers really believe that it is always 
profitable to raise and fatten cattle ; and of 
course they continue the business from year to 
year. 

Very valuable manure can be made by it ; and 
this is most fortunate, for it too often happens 
that they get nothing else for all their trouble 
and expense. 

They are anxious to make the farm very rich, 
for they are wise enough to know that in no other 
condition will it pay, and having full faith in the 
contents of the stable and barnyard, they purchase 
thousands of bushels of corn to feed to all kinds 
of stock. In other words, they want to gather 

108 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 109 

up as much nitrogen in the stable as we have col- 
lected in our twenty acres of clover. 

Indian corn contains one pound of nitrogen per 
bushel. Therefore they must purchase 3600 bush- 
els of corn to get as much nitrogen as we have in 
our twenty acres of clover. 

At the present time Indian corn brings sixty 
cents per bushel. Hence, they must pay $2160 
for 3600 pounds of nitrogen, 230 pounds of phos- 
phoric acid, and 140 pounds of potash. That 
will be paying over $2000 for as much nitrogen 
in corn as we get for fifty dollars in green clover ; 
that is, provided they make nothing on the 
cattle and all the profit must come from the 
manure. 

Now, how stands the case with experienced 
farmers ? 

Alderman Mechi, the most progressive and one 
of the most enlightened farmers of all England, 
says : "I have no doubt this statement will startle 
many a practical farmer, and will raise a storm of 
indignation among stock-feeders and stock-breed- 

10 



110 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

ers ; but the naked truth is best told, which is, 
* That live stock are necessary evils, mere manu- 
facturers of manure, and unattended with any di- 
rect profit/ " 

This is not his opinion only. Many able men 
freely endorse it. Here is one whose opinion can- 
not be misunderstood : " A friend of mine," says 
Mechi, "a close calculator, who on 1500 acres 
does not keep a bullock, says those who keep 
many bullocks will never want to make a will." 

Then why does Alderman Mechi fatten any cat- 
tle? why keep so many sheep? Why does he 
fatten about 400 hogs every winter ? 

He says: "I know by long and large experi- 
ence that pigs pay better for purchased food than 
any other stock ; and even they will by no means 
' clear their teeth.^ " 

His object is manure. He has no other motive. 
He buys 8000 bushels of Indian corn or barley 
in a single year to feed to his animals, and looks 
to his great tank full of rich manure for all 
his profit. 



FAKMING WITH GREEN MANURES. Ill 

We have many other cases of this kind on rec- 
ord. Here is one : Mr. Burritt visited the farm 
of Samuel Jonas in England, consisting of 3000 
acres. He says: "I was surprised at one fact 
which I learned in connection with his economy. 
He keeps about 170 bullocks, buying in October 
and selling in May. Now, it would occasion an 
American farmer some wonderment to be told 
that this great herd of cattle is fed and fatted 
almost entirely for the manure they make.^' — 
Genesee Farmer , 1864. 

Can we do any better in this country ? 

The Hon. Geo. Geddes of New York says 
he would keep no stock of any kind if he 
could help it ; he always lost money by them. 
" You rear a steer till he is a thousand days old, 
and in ordinary times he is worth forty dollars. 
You get four cents a day for your time, labor, and 
the food consumed. Will that pay ? He keeps 
sheep to get rid of his straw and tread it into ma- 
nure." — Genesee Farmer j vol. 25. 

With the highest deference and respect for his 



112 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

opinion, I must say that this is a very poor ex- 
cuse for keeping sheep. If he will send out all 
his straw in the fall which he does not need for 
bedding, and have it spread on the field to be 
ploughed for corn the next spring, he will never 
afterwards complain tliat he cannot get rid of his 
straw. 

John Johnston says : " Land must have a cov- 
ering of grass or clover while resting." 

How it is possible to have more straw than 
you can profitably make use of I cannot see. 

Some years ago I raised 905 bushels of pota- 
toes to the acre by planting the sets on ploughed 
and mellow ground a foot apart, and covering 
them with straw from twelve to eighteen inches 
deep. I would always raise potatoes in that 
manner if I could spare the straw to do it. 

And when your corn-fodder is hauled in, cover 
the field where it grew with ten, or even five loads, 
of straw to the acre, and the spring crop that fol- 
lows it will reward you well for your trouble. 

The very day that you spread straw on a bare 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 113 

field it begins to pay you an interest, it may be 

of six or ten per cent., on the investment. 

But if you expose it in the barnyard to rot, 

you may lose a part of it by leaching, and get no 

intei*est from the balance for six to nine months 

to come. 

10 » H 



CHAPTER XVI. 

FOEAGE FOR THE HORSES ON THE FARM. 

TT7HEN we have concluded to use green crops 
* ' for manure, of course we should leave all 
the clover and all other vegetation stand for this 
purpose, and cut as little as possible to feed to 
animals. 

It will not do to take the clover or the Hun- 
garian grass or the sowed corn from the fields 
intended for wheat. 

We should have a clear understanding of the 
amount of forage which our stock will need, and 
then make ample provision for them. 

What is the experience of the best farmers 
upon this subject? 

Colman writes in his European Agriculturey 
" It is estimated by many intelligent farmers in 

114 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 115 

England that the horse-teams require for their 
maintenance full one-fourth of the produce of 
the soil/' 

Again he says : " Indeed, so far as my observa- 
tion goes, there is no single source of expense, 
none which abstracts so much from the profits of 
farming, and none of which the farmers in gen- 
eral are so little aware, as that of horse-teams." 
Alderman Mechi says: ^^This brings me to 
the fearful question : What portion of the acre- 
age of this kingdom do farm-horses consume ? I 
answer, Nearly one-fourth of all the arable land 
in the kingdom." 

This is a very discouraging picture — that 
one-fourth of all you raise will be devoured by 
the horses which are required to work the farm ! 

Is there no way to remedy this? Certainly 
there is a way. We must raise enormous crops 
of forage; nothing else can save us from this 
great expense. 

Joseph Harris, speaking of John Johnston, 
says : " Last summer he wrote me that he had 



116 FARMING WITH GEEEN MANURES. 

raised a great crop of timothy, but that the story 
was too big to tell. I. asked him about it yester- 
day. He top-dressed a piece of timothy grass 
with a compost of hen droppings, chip manure, 
and cow dung. The timothy was nearly six feet 
high and as thick as wheat straw, with heads 
almost a foot long. He weighed several of the 
cocks and estimated the crop at five tons to the 
acre !" 

In 1860 a friend of mine cut and weighed 
and sold to his neighbors nine tons and a half of 
timothy and clover hay from a two-acre lot which 
had been manured from his slaughter-house. 

We should learn two useful lessons from these 
examples : 

First, that top dressing is all that is required to 
ensure a big crop of timothy ; and second, that 
a little land can be made rich enough to furnish 
us with all the hay needed on the farm. Hay 
from Hungarian grass has no superior when well 
made. 

" A correspondent of the Prairie Farmery Mr. 



FAEMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 117 

Philips of Butler county, states that the premium 
acre at the last fair of that county yielded eight 
tons and two hundred pounds of well-cured 
hay.'' — Cultivator, 

Colman says of millet : '' I wish my country- 
men were more impressed with the extraordinary 
value of this plant. I know few plants which 
make a more abundant return, or which, when 
it is well cured, give a more nutritious forage or 
one more relished by stock." 

In 1854, Lawes and Gilbert sowed some 
clover-seed in a rich garden. They say : " The 
estimated total amount of green clover obtained 
from this garden soil in six years, without further 
manure, is about 126 tons per acre, equal to about 
twenty-six and a half tons of hay. 

"Fourteen cuttings have been taken without 
any re-sowing of seed." 

Why was no re-seeding required during the 
six years ? It was either because the soil w^as so 
very rich, or because it was cut so often and so 
early that no seed could mature ; and it may be 



118 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

the nature of clover to live on till seeds are de- 
veloped. 

Besides the plants above mentioned, I advise 
you to have one, two, or three acres of orchard 
grass, and to use every available means to 
make the land very rich. It will be ready the 
first of all to mow in the spring. By top dress- 
ing it in the fall or very early in the spring it 
will never fail, never run out. 

All the plants above mentioned have peculiar 
merits of their own ; hence the great advantage 
of having a patch of each near the barn, for 
summer soiling as well as for winter forage. 

It is said that the Hungarian is "so deep-root- 
ed that severe drought does not affect it in the least, 
and it may be sown upon the highest and driest 
soils without fear of failure," and that it will 
yield, when kept for seed, twenty to thirty bushels 
per acre. Hence, the seed need not cost more 
than fifty cents to a dollar per bushel. 

Let me say a few words about making hay. 
Dr. Voelcker has discovered that rain will leach 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 119 

out of hay while being made nearly one-half of 
its best material. 

Therefore, how very unwise to cut grass in 
rainy weather, as many do to be ready to make 
hay when it clears up ! Far better to mow on a 
clear morning, and put it up in well-made cocks 
in the evening should there be any appearance of 
rain ; then it will be comparatively safe. Should 
even a heavy shower come, all that can fall on 
each cock cannot leach through it, and hence no 
damage will be done. 

Another arrangement is worthy of your at- 
tention. Have your permanent hay-field as near 
the barn as possible, and then you can haul in 
three or four loads in less time than you could go 
to the back field for one load. This is a matter 
of the highest importance in stormy weather. 

One or more acres of sowed corn will make a 
grand addition to the winter provender, provided 
you need any. 

A brief notice of what others have accom- 
plished with it I think will be acceptable. 



.120 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

David Miller of Fayette co., Pa., writes to the 
Cultivator in 1842: "I have generally had from 
about sixty to seventy tons of green food to the 
acre, and think it decidedly better than grass for 
either beef or milk." 

H. L. Ellsworth, Esq., says : " I sowed four 
and a half bushels of common corn per acre 
broadcast, and harrowed in the same. Having 
soaked the corn in saltpetre, \t took a rapid start, 
overtopped the weeds, and covered the ground 
with a forest of stalks. Being anxious to ascer- 
tain the quantity, I measured a few square feet 
of the stoutest. I found I had five pounds of 
green fodder per square foot — that is, 108J tons 
per acre. I cut the first crop the early part of 
July, and ploughed and sowed the land again, 
and took a second crop two-thirds as large." — 
Qiltivator, 1842. 

Here we have 172 tons of green fodder per acre 
in one year. Of course this large amount of 
provender could only be obtained on rich land. 

Mr. Peters says : " The amount of corn-fodder 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 121 

which will grow upon an acre is truly fabulous, 
and no one will believe it until they have had oc- 
ular demonstration. It is not a very large thing 
to grow 200 tons of green fodder to the acre. I 
think it possible to grow 250 tons with care and 
a good season." — Genesee Farmer ^ 1865. 

" Gustavus Harmoir, president of the Agri- 
cultural College of Valenciennes, has been ex- 
perimenting with Indian corn as a soiling crop. 
The variety used was the ^ giant maize of Cara- 
qua.^ The seed was drilled May 31st in rows 
about three feet apart and eighteen inches in the 
drill. By the 15tli of August the stalks were 
fourteen feet high, and the yield was over 450 
tons per acre." — Genesee Fai'mer^ 1863. 

We have no higher authority on the value of 
green corn as a food for cows than Col. Waring 
of Ogden Farm, and so perfectly is he satisfied 
with it that he exclaims in the American Agricul- 
turist^ " Corn never ! corn-fodder always ! " 

Again he says : " Throughout nearly the whole 

country there is no crop that can at all compare, 
11 



122 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

when we consider both its value, pound for pound, 
and the enormous yield that may be obtained from 
an acre with corn-fodder. Whether the purpose 
be to make butter, cheese, or beef, or to keep 
young stock in thrifty growing condition, it is at 
once most profitable and nutritious." 

Colman, in estimating the value of differ- 
ent kinds of forage, says : " I have some doubts, 
however, whether for the purpose of soiling, for 
milk, or for fattening any product can be found 
equal to that of Indian corn cut green." — Euro- 
pean Agriculture, 

It is said that if we sow forty to fifty grains to 
the foot in drills three feet apart we will have 
one-third more fodder than with twenty grains to 
the foot. I have raised it for more than ten years 
on Plumgrove Farm, and for winter fodder 
I prefer about six stalks to the foot, because 
it will then grow eight and ten feet high, and can 
be cut when ready, independent of all weather, 
and put in shock, and will stand well till Novem- 
ber, when it may be put in the barn. 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 123 

For feeding through the summer to horses, 
cows, and pigs I care not how thick it is planted ; 
even fifty grains to the foot will be better than 
any less amount. But you will find this much 
more troublesome to save for winter provender, 
because you will have to cure it in the same way 
that you make hay, and may be very much an- 
noyed with wet weather. 

To conclude, remember the great secret of suc- 
cess in agriculture is the concentration of manure 
and labor. A poor soil with little labor, little 
tillage, and no manure will never produce a large 
crop of green corn or any other kind of forage. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

LOSS OF MANURE. 

^TTHILE makiDg vast piles of manure by feed- 
ing grain and green crops, are you able to 
save all the residue? 

Certainly not ; that would be impossible. 

How much of it do you lose ? 

Alderman Mechi declares : " Upon a careful 
investigation we safely assert that twenty per 
cent, of ordinary farmyard manure is wasted. 
An examination of ten farm-homesteads, con- 
secutively taken, has fully established this sup- 
position." 

Manure is the farmer's capital. What business 
can be carried on with profit if you are obliged to 
borrow money at an interest of twenty per cent.? 
And if you lose twenty per cent, of your capital 

124 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 125 

every year, where is the difference between you 
and the reckless borrower? 

Does Mechi save all the manure? Yes — we 
may say all of it. It is made over water-tight 
troughs, and is carefully washed into a great tank, 
from which it is pumped by a steam-engine 
through three-inch iron pipes over all the farm. 
But this is not all he saves by the operation. 

It will cost you at least fifty cents a ton to haul 
and spread the contents of the barnyard on any 
distant field. It costs him but four cents per ton to 
spread in a liquid form all the manure he makes. 
Hence his profit as a farmer on all his great in- 
vestments is fifteen to eighteen per cent. He very 
truly says, "It is the filling, carting, turning 
over, refilling, carting, and spreading, and wast- 
ing, that run away with the farmer's profit." 

He has abandoned green manuring, which he 

once followed extensively. In fact, his great 

outlay will not justify it now, even if he wished 

to do it. 

Notwithstanding all this, he says: "If stock 
II* 



126 FAKMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

is too dear, or you are short of capital, plough in 
green and root crops, particularly on heavy land/' 

So much for England's model farmer. Now 
for the greatest light in our own country. 

John Johnston says : " I have suffered an im- 
mense loss from the liquids running from my 
barnyards, but I never could contrive a plan to 
prevent it." — Cultivator , 1861. 

Probably no man ever estimated manure nearer 
its true value, or ever had a more striking expe- 
rience of its power, than John Johnston ; and 
how passing strange it is that even he, with all 
his wisdom and ability, could not save the whole 
of it ! 

It is an established fact that the liquid is the 
most valuable portion of the manure. 

Joseph Harris, in alluding to its great waste, 
say in Walks and Talks, No. 4,9 : " As ordinarily 
managed, however, the liquid either runs away 
or soaks through the crevices of the planks into 
the ground, and is lost." 

The American Agriculturist^ 1872, says : "The 



FAEMING WITH GEEEN MANUEES. 127 

value of liquid manures is not sufficiently real- 
ized. It is safe to say that not one-thousandth 
part of this is ever saved for use, but nearly the 
whole is allowed to go to waste." 

Now, as it is almost an utter impossibility to 
save all the liquids unless we adopt Mechi^s 
costly plan, what an overwhelming argument in 
favor of green manures ! For all the liquid of 
any value in grain or in manure originally came 
from the green stalk. 

There is a way of saving the urine which 
should not be overlooked. Erect a temporary 
fence around a piece of ground which you can 
till, and keep your animals on it. Let them re- 
main there till the cold weather obliges you to 
put them in the barn. You can keep the cattle 
there all the time, if the lot is large enough to 
require all their manure, during the warm season, 
or you may let them pasture in the field by day 
and feed them at night in the enclosure with 
green corn, Hungarian grass, clover, rye, cab- 
bage, and everything eatable. 



128 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

If you will sprinkle over this pen more or 
less straw or corn-fodder, it will be an advantage. 
But do not plough it up till you want to sow 
or plant some kind of crop. Better have two or 
three acres that are very rich than ten that are 
very poor. Cows may pasture among rocks and 
stumps and on hillsides where you never plough, 
and may return at night to enrich the pen ; and 
this will pay you well for their night and morn- 
ing meal. Mechi says : " 1500 sheep folded on 
an acre of land for twenty-four hours (or 100 
sheep fifteen days) would manure that land suf- 
ficiently to carry it through a four years' rota- 
tion." By this wise arrangement they save all 
the liquid as well as the solid residue. This is 
a matter of vast importance. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

JOHN JOHNSTON AND OTHEES ON EAISING 
WHEAT. 

TN 1874 one of the editors of the Country 
-*- Gentleman after a visit to John Johnston 
said : " Mr. Johnston showed us a field upon 
which he had raised wheat for more than thirty- 
years every alternate year, the average yield con- 
stantly increasing. His plan was to fallow- 
plough about the middle of June ; plough again 
about September 1st, and top dress heavily with 
manure and sow wheat. Early the next spring 
he sowed on clover-seed and plaster. After har- 
vest, if the clover grew large enough to head out, 
he pastured it more or less, but if no blossoms 
appeared he put no stock on it. The next spring 
he pastured the clover lightly until it blossomed, 

I 129 



130 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

when it was turned under as before. He had 
found this two-crop rotation very successful/' 

Now, can there be any objection to the addition 
of one more green crop as a top dressing to this 
very successful mode of raising wheat? You 
recollect how strongly he is in favor of some kind 
of protection to save the crop from the blasting 
winds and other injuries. After ploughing in 
the clover there would be ample time to raise 
ten or fifteen tons per acre of green corn, and to 
cultivate and clean the field as effectually as if 
nothing was growing on it. 

We should notice this fact — that he "top 
dressed heavily with manure." Yet even that 
did not prevent the wheat from being killed 
when exposed to north-west winds. 

If the free use of the very best manure will 
always ensure a heavy crop of wheat, his crops 
should never fail. He was in the habit every 
winter of feeding many tons of oil-cake and 
about 1500 bushels of corn and a large amount 
of hay. With such a mass of rich material why 



FAEMING WITH GKEEN MANUKES. 131 

should he need or use anything else? Yet he 
ploughed in clover. And such clover! How 
rank it must have grown after the top dressing 
such as he gave the wheat! Yet how careful he- 
was only to pasture the clover lightly before 
turning it in ! In fact, he made use of every 
means in his power to ensure heavy crops of 
wheat. 

Joseph Harris, in his celebrated lecture on 
Wheat- Culture in Western New Yorh, gives us 
Johnston's views on the use of salt and lime. 

" On rich land," says Harris, " salt has a tend- 
ency to check an excessive growth of straw. 
In some experiments made recently on the farm 
of the Royal Agricultural Society the unma- 
nured plot of wheat produced twenty-nine bush- 
els per acre, and the plot dressed with three 
hundredweight of common salt thirty-eight and 
three-fourths bushels, or an increase of nine and 
three-fourths bushels per acre. 

" A few years ago I was on the farm of John 
Johnston of Seneca county. He had dressed a 



132 FAEMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

part of a field of wheat with a barrel of salt per 
acre, and the effect was most decidedly beneficial. 
The wheat was heavier and the straw much 
brighter and stiffer. It also ripened several days 
earlier, and escaped the midge in consequence. 
Mr. Johnston is here with us to-day, and he has 
just informed me that he thinks there is nothing 
like salt for stiffening the straw on rich lands. 
He sows a barrel per acre on the fallows just be- 
fore sowing the wheat. He has sown as much as 
seventy-five barrels in a year on his wheat. 

" Lime is also a splendid manure for producing 
plump heads of wheat and a stiff straw. There 
is nothing like it. Mr. Johnston says if he were 
a young man he would lime every acre of his 
farm. In 1844 he applied 200 bushels of lime 
on two acres before sowing the wheat, and it was 
a magnificent crop — over fifty bushels per acre ; 
and he says he can see the effect of that lime on 
the land to the present day." — Genesee Farmer , 
1863. 

After reading this shall we be afraid to plough 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 133 

in green manure, lest it should make weak straw 
and cause the wheat to fall? Here we have a 
certain remedy in salt and lime. But we must 
be careful not to use too much lime. There is an 
old proverb— the lesson, we presume, of observa- 
tion and experience — 

" That too much lime and no manure 
Will make the farm and farmer poor." 

The reason .is plain enough. Lime contains 
very little plant-food. A good crop of wheat of 
thirty-four bushels per acre takes from the soil 
only one pound of lime, and the straw about 
seven pounds. Salt and lime act as solvents of 
' the soil and of the vegetable matter in it. 
Hence, the more green crops and stable manure 
we plough in, the longer the land can stand the 
dissolving action of these minerals. 

Alderman Mechi found salt to be indispensable 
on his rich land. He says he salted all his 
wheat at the rate of four to eight bushels per 
acre, and was determined to ^ise much more. He 



12 



134 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

knew a gentleman in Northamptonshire whose 
wheat crop could scarcely ever be kept from go- 
ing down until he used salt, which had effect- 
ually kept it standing. 

When putting in wheat it is a matter of great 
importance to have the land in the right condi- 
tion to receive the seed. If you plough in a very 
heavy green crop and sow at once, you may have 
an almost total failure and raise but a few bushels 
of wheat. The reason is plain. If dry weather 
should come on and continue for several weeks, 
there will be a nearly complete separation between 
the surface and subsoil. The wheat cannot grow 
in the dry crust, and as no moisture can arise 
from capillary attraction to soften this crust, the 
seed may perish, or make but a feeble growth till 
the ensuing spring. From a careless disregard 
of these facts even large crops of clover ploughed 
in have been apparently injurious, and the whole 
system of green manuring has been condemned 
and abandoned. 

We find some very excellent advice upon this 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 135 

subject in the foreign correspondence of the 
Country Gentleman. The writer says : " We 
want the ground to settle before sowing. Never 
sow wheat or rye on new-ploughed land if you 
can help it, but give it the last furrow from six 
to eight weeks before sowing-time. This is of 
the highest importance. The soil then becomes 
thoroughly pulverized by the alternate action of 
rain and sun — it rots; ay, it will rise (puff) like 
well-made dough — I can describe it in no other 
way. The land must look as if yeast had been 
put into it, which had done its work well. Then 
is the time to sow." 

Here you see the ground must settle. Now, it 
cannot settle in dry weather if piled on top of green 
manure of any kind. In some seasons there 
will be so much rain just at the right time that 
all seeds will grow, no matter when or how care- 
lessly they are put in. That we may never fail to 
raise a good crop of wheat, I prefer to have In- 
dian corn for the last green dressing, and to keep 
it on top as a mulch, as directed in Chapter VII. 



136 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

On spreading lime and other fertilizers I wish 
to say a few words. I have so often noticed the 
utter impossibility of Spreading anything evenly 
with the shovel that I was induced to invent^ and 
then take out a patent for, a machine which will 
sow from three bushels to three hundred per acre 
of material as fine as plaster or as coarse as 
the grains of Indian corn. Its cheapness, sim- 
plicity, and durability will recommend it to 
every one. It consists of a hollow cylinder or 
drum from six to twelve feet in length and from 
two to three feet in diameter. It is formed of 
long boards or vanes, which have one edge fas- 
tened by a hinge at each end to a drumhead, and 
also by a hinge to a drumhead in the middle. 
The free edge of every board overlaps the hinged 
edge of the vane next to it. By means of mova- 
ble bolts the space between the overlapping edges 
can be adjusted to the thirty-second of an inch, or 
to a whole inch if desired. A shaft runs through 
the drum and has a wheel at each end. One 
wheel is fastened to the drum to turn it. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

THE PEESERVATION OF HEALTH ON THE 
FARM. 

rpHE human body is composed of fourteen 
-■- elements. These are carbon, hydrogen, oxy- 
gen, nitrogen, phosphorus, sulphur, calcium, 
magnesium, potassium, sodium, chlorine, iron, 
fluorine, and silicon. 

All our flesh and bones, the brain and nerves 
and blood, are made of these elements in a state 
of combination. 

Perfect health consists in the perfect preser- 
vation of the relative proportion of these com- 
pounds. 

If the mineral matters should predominate for 

some time in the blood, the capillary system — 

that is, the blood-vessels which are as fine as hair 
12 * 137 



138 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

- — will become clogged up and premature old age 
will soon appear. 

If carbon and hydrogen should be in great ex- 
cess in the blood, as they are the heat-producers 
of the world, whether in or out of the system, 
then there is danger of fevers, boils, abscesses, 
bilious disorders, and eruptive diseases of the 
skin. 

Now, the object of this chapter is to teach you 
how to prevent all kinds of sickness. "VVe shall 
say nothing about the medical treatment when 
you are sick ; we leave that to your family phy- 
sician. 

Bread contains more bone — that is, more min- 
eral matter, more ashes — than any other kind of 
food. 

Besides this, bread and butter furnish more 
carbon and hydrogen to the system than any 
other kind of diet except sugar and fat meat. 
Yet there is nothing more healthy or more 
strengthening to the body than bread. It is the 
disproportion, the excessive use of bread, when 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 139 

compared with other things, which does all the 
mischief and lays a sure foundation for nearly 
every malady. 

In ancient times, when they had no mills that 
would turn out a hundred barrels of flour a day, 
and they had to grind their grain by hand, there 
was very little danger of eating too much bread. 

They had to live more upon flesh, fish, fruits, 
and vegetables; and as this kind of diet did 
not introduce an excess of carbon and hydrogen, 
nor too much ashesy into the blood, they lived to 
be very old, and were clear-headed and as active 
when a hundred years of age as our young men 
of twenty-five. 

Now, let me give you a few well-known illus- 
trations to establish the truth of these statements. 

Plutarch says the ancient Britons only began 
to grow old at one hundred and twenty years. 
They lived on acorns, berries, fish,*flesh, and fowl. 

Herodotus tells of a people of Ethiopia who 
lived on flesh and milk one hundred and twenty 
years. 



140 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

An ancient sect of India lived on fruit and veg- 
etables one hundred and fifty to two hundred years. 

The Egyptians lived on fruit and vegetables one 
hundred and thirty years. 

Henry Hastings lived on vegetables one "hun- 
dred and ten years. 

A native of Bengal lived three hundred and 
seventy years on a very low diet, principally 
fruits and vegetables. 

Margaret Patton lived one hundred and thirty- 
seven years, mostly on milk. 

Charles Macklem lived one hundred and seven 
years on flesh, fish, fruits, and vegetables. 

Ann Bannerman lived one hundred and five 
years on vegetables. 

Mrs. Watkins lived one hundred and ten years, 
and the last thirty entirely upon fruits and vege- 
tables. 

Owen Carollan lived on potatoes, buttermilk, 
and cherries one hundred and twenty-seven years. 

Elizabeth Macpherson lived on buttermilk and 
greens one hundred and seventeen years. 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 141 

Mr. Dobson lived on flesh, fruits, milk, ci- 
der, and vegetables one hundred and thirty-nine 
years. 

Francis Confit lived on a very low diet, princi- 
pally on new-laid raw eggs, one hundred and fifty 
years. 

Philip Loutin lived on one meal a day one 
hundred and five years. 

Paul Barrot lived on vegetables one hundred 
and six years. 

Mary Rogers lived one hundred and eighteen 
years, and the last sixty entirely upon vegetables. 

John Wilson lived one hundred and sixteen 
years, the last forty on roasted turnips for supper. 

Thomas Parr always proportioned his food to 
the amount of exercise, and lived one hundred 
and fifty-two years. 

John Murphy lived on potatoes and milk one 
hundred and six years. 

Henry Jenkins lived on cold meats and salads 
one hundred and sixty-nine years. 

In the African desert a man was found by 



142 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

Captain Riley who lived four hundred years on 
milk alone. 

How can we account for these remarkable cases 
of longevity ? There is one cause, and only one, 
which touches every case, and that is the extreme 
temperance in the use of bread. They differ in 
everything else. Climate, age, sex, condition, and 
situation appear to have no effect upon the general 
result. All come out alike, and reach their cen- 
tennial by observing one rule. 

Have we anything in the history of the lower 
order of animals to corroborate these deductions ? 
Yes. 

The wild hog lives three hundred years on 
acorns, fruits, herbage, roots, and small animals, 
and, it is very probable, never has a full supply of 
them. The domestic hog lives on grain from ten to 
twenty years. The eagle lives five hundred years 
on fish and flesh. The parrot in its wild state 
lives on fruits five or six hundred years. Our 
common fowls are crammed with grain, and will 
live only from ten to twenty years. 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 143 

Here we may conclude this subject with a 
declaration which cannot easily be refuted— that 
to enjoy a long life of uninterrupted health, with 
a clear memory, a bright and cheerful heart, and 
a strong arm, our bread, butter, lard, sugar, and 
fat must bear a wise proportion to the lean meats 
and to the fruits and vegetables in daily use. 

During a practice of more than forty years this 
subject has engaged my attention. Hence it is no 
sudden conclusion that induces me to say that our 
combustible diet of carbon and hydrogen has more 
influence in predisposing the system to disease 
than all other things combined. 



CHAPTER XX. 

THE RESTORATION OF POOR LAND BY GREEN 
MANURES. 

IT' ARMS that have been worked by tenants 
■*- or by careless owners for a long course of 
years generally become so poor that very little 
more than the seed sown is obtained in the yearly 
produce. 

Now, it is a vital question to every farmer, 
What change has taken place in the soil that it 
will no longer yield a remunerative crop ? If the 
minerals have been entirely exhausted, he may be 
living where he cannot procure ground bone and 
other fertilizers at any reasonable price, and 
hence he must abandon the farm and leave it to 
time and Nature to restore. 

144 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 145 

But, most fortunately for man, this is very sel- 
dom, if ever, the case. 

Many well-established facts are on record that 
prove that the loss of power to produce even a 
small crop is owing to the consumption of nitrog- 
enous compounds and vegetable matter in the 
soil. I call it a consumption because it is a positive 
burning up by oxidation of everything in the ground 
that had been deposited there by the growth and 
decay of organic matter. 

And the more you plough and harrow and 
loosen up the soil, the faster will this destruction 
take place. Then you will please remember this 
plain truth, that fire and tillage with the plough 
and harrow act in the same way and accomplish 
the same object — the exhaustion of the farm. 
In corroboration of these views let me give you 
a very interesting and instructive fact to verify 
them. 

Joseph Harris, in the Genesee Farmer of 1863, 

says : " Thirty or forty years ago the oak-openings 

in Western New York were considered far in- 
13 K 



146 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

ferior to the heavily-timbered land and to the 
lowlands on the borders of the Genesee River. 
The Indians had for years burnt over this land, 
and consequently it was to a great extent desti- 
tute of organic matter. On this soil plaster and 
clover acted like a charm. Large crops of 
clover have been raised for years and ploughed 
under. The plaster stimulated the growth of 
clover, and the clover when ploughed under fur- 
nished the soil with large quantities of organic 
matter ; and the result is that this land, which was 
formerly considered poor, is the best and most pro- 
ductive in the State/' 

Here we have reliable and satisfactory proof 
that poor land can be restored to a productive 
condition without purchasing artificial manures 
beyond one or two bushels of plaster per acre 
once a year. Now, if we ask the chemist what 
must that soil contain to yield fine crops of grain, 
he will tell you, " The ash of agricultural plants 
consists of the phosphates, sulphates, silicates, 
and carbonates of potash, soda, lime, and mag- 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 147 

nesia, with small quantities of oxide of iron and 
manganese and alkaline chlorides." — Johnston. 

Then all but the sulphates must have been in 
the soil, but were not available for some cause. 
What was that cause? 

What was indispensable to enable them to be- 
come active ? The earth was comparatively desti- 
tute of atmospheric food. There was the great 
and only deficiency. 

The rich manure so much needed was floating 
in an invisible state above the poor fields. That 
is a gaseous but solid fact. The chemist tells 
us that " When a vegetable is destroyed by 
burning it is mostly resolved into air. On the 
other hand, when it is formed by growth its 
substance is mostly derived from air." 

This being the case, it is imperative on us to 
introduce the elements of the air into the soil 
and convert them into plant-food. How shall 
we do this ? We must loosen up the earth, and 
keep it moist and mellow during all the growing 
seasons of the year. 



148 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

To accomplish this effectually and in the 
cheapest manner, we must cover the land with 
green crops, and keep them upon the surface as 
long as possible, and then plough them in when 
grain or anything else must be sown. To be 
satisfied that they are all-sufficient we have only 
to study their wonderful effects. When the 
ground is loose from the presence of humus — that 
is, vegetable matter in a state of decay — the air is 
freely admitted, and its nitrogen is to a certain 
extent converted into nitric acid and ammonia; 
and, most fortunately, these compounds are re- 
tained by the moisture and the absorbent power 
of the organic matter. And besides this, a large 
portion of the nitrogen contained in the green 
dressing also undergoes the same chemical change 
and is treasured up for future crops. 

The incomparable merits of green manures 
are not all the qualities that make this mode of 
improvement the great sheet-anchor of the prac- 
tical farmer. 

The roots of growing plants have great power 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 149 

over the minerals of the soil in breaking up 
their texture and reducing them to powder. 
And here let me say, Have no fear of getting 
too much humus into the soil. An acre of land 
twelve inches deep weighs 2000 tons. If you 
could plough in 100 tons of green manure every 
one, two, or three years, that would only be 
mixing the one-twentieth of vegetable matter 
with nineteen-twentieths of the earth a foot 
deep. Would one gold dollar among twenty 
copper cents make the pile of money look too 
rich? 

Even on the dark prairies of the West the im- 
mense amount of good derived from the preser- 
vation and frequent replenishing of organic 
matter in the soil has been noticed and recorded 
by many practical farmers. 

C. W. Babbitt of Metamora, Woodford county, 
Illinois, says in the Patent Office Keport of 
1855: "It would seem that the prairies here 
might be continued in their virgin richness sim- 
ply by annually ploughing under the stubble of 



13* 



150 FAKMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

\ 

our grain-fields and the stalks of Indian corn, 
never allowing them to be consumed by fire. A 
short distance south of this resided two farmers, 
one of. whom every year gathered up his corn- 
stalks and burnt them, and also burnt over 
his stubble-fields before ploughing. The other 
never allowed a stalk or a straw to be burnt on 
his land, but always ploughed them under. 
After some fifteen years had elai^sed the farm of 
the former yielded on an average some fifteen 
bushels of corn less to the acre than when he 
commenced cultivating it, while that of the latter 
produced as abundantly as at first.'* 

It is a matter of astonishment that a prairie 
soil, which is dark with the decayed remains of 
an old vegetation, should show in the compara- 
tively short period of fifteen years any neglect to 
restore to the ground the humus it had lost by 
the production of grain. 

David A. Wells, in his Booh of AgricultwCy 
1855 and 1856, says : " It is estimated by intel- 
ligent farmers in Indiana that their river-bottoms. 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 151 

which used to produce an average crop of sixty 
bushels of corn to the acre, now produce only 
forty. In Wisconsin, which is younger still, it 
is estimated that only one-half the number of 
bushels of wheat are now raised on the acre 
which were raised twelve years ago." 

Here we have whole districts suffering from the 
same cause — the exhaustion of organic matter, 
and which can be restored with little labor and 
little cost. If the loss of productive power was 
owing to the exhaustion of mineral food, this 
could only be renewed from the subsoil and 
rocks by a long rest or by purchasing the lost 
material at great expense. 

Is it necessary to say anything more upon this 
subject? Is not every one convinced that raising 
wheat would ruin one-half of all the farmers in 
the world if the diminution of their crops arose 
from the loss of minerals in the soil ? Why ? 
Because one-half of them are living where they 
cannot obtain artificial manures at any reasonable 
price. I cannot close this subject without the 



152 FAEMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

presentation of one more argument, which has 
already been before the public for some time. 

" An incendiary reduced to ashes a pile of bar- 
ley-stacks from some twelve to fifteen acres of bar- 
ley. The ashes were scattered over about half an 
acre of ground adjoining the stacks, thus concen- 
trating the mineral constituents to about one-twen- 
ty-fifth of the land from which they were taken. 

" A turnip crop, a barley crop, and a crop of 
seeds taken subsequently from this half acre 
showed no perceptible superiority over the rest of 
the field, neither portions of the land yielding 
more than ordinary products.^' — Cultivator ^ 1853. 

This grand and useful experiment proves be- 
yond cavil that the nitric acid and ammonia in 
the air are not sufficient to supply all the avail- 
able nitrogen which is needed to produce a luxu- 
riant vegetation. 

Did these compounds of nitrogen exist in the 
air or in the soil in ample abundance, what im- 
mense crops would have been produced on that 
half acre ! 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 153 

Suppose the farmer had spread this pile of bar- 
ley-stacks, with all the grain in them, on half an 
acre of ground, what would have been the result ? 
Twelve to fifteen acres of barley, even at twenty- 
five bushels per acre, would be from 300 to 375 
bushels of grain in the stacks. Now, if you 
would spread this amount of barley on the half 
acre without the straw, it certainly would manure 
it well. Then add the straw, which could not 
have been less than twelve to fifteen tons, and 
when all was worked into the soil do you think 
the turnip crop, the barley crop, and the crop of 
seed would have " shown no perceptible superi- 
ority over the rest of the field"? 

Now, let us see what lesson we are taught by 
the analysis of a very rich alluvial soil. 

Prof. Johnson says the Zuyder Zee soil contains 
enough of potash for 144 maximum and 648 
average crops of barley, and enough of phos- 
phoric acid for sixty-five maximum and 292 aver- 
age crops, and enough of nitrogen in ammonia 
for seven maximum and thirty-one average bar- 



154 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

ley crops. Here we see that without some addi- 
tion from the air the ammonia would be exhausted 
by very large crops in seven years. Then, accord- 
ing to the teaching of the burnt stacks of barley, 
to obtain paying crops we should put on some 
kind of manure containing nitrogen or plough 
in green crops. Yet, according to common prac- 
tice, many farmers would go to the expense of 
sowing on more phosphates as soon as the crops 
began to fail. This is a lesson which should not 
be forgotten. Then we will always know what 
to do when the crops begin to diminish. Not a 
shadow of doubt will rest upon it. We must at 
once restore to the soil the organic elements by 
ploughing in green manures. Of course the first 
choice will be clover ; if that will not grow with 
the aid of plaster, then we may resort to oats or 
rye or buckwheat. 

The reader may entertain the suspicion that I 
set too high a value upon the restorative powers 
of clover. To prove that it is almost impossible 
to do this, I ask a careful reading of the follow- 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 155 

incr extract of a letter from the Hon. George Ged- 
des of New York to Joseph Harris. 

He says : " All that I shall try to prove to you 
is, that the fact that clover and plaster are by far 
the cheapest manures that can be had for our lands 
has been demonstrated by many farmers beyond a 
doubt — so much cheaper than barnyard manure 
that the mere loading and spreading of the lat- 
ter cost more than the plaster and clover." 

This clear declaration has more weight with me 
than the testimony of ten thousand unknown 
farmers, because George Geddes has experiment- 
ed with clover intelligently, and relied upon it on 
his own farm for the last sixty or seventy years. 

I will close this with the encouraging words of 
Dr. Yoelcker, the able and reliable chemist who 
has devoted so much of his time and talents to 
the examination of this subject. 

He says : " Indeed, no kind of manure can be 
compared in point of efficacy for wheat to the 
manuring which the land gets in a really good 
crop of clover." 



156 FAEMING WITH GREEN MANUEES. 

We have said that if clover will not grow by 
itself you had better sow some other kind of 
seed. It is very probable that oats will grow 
ten or fifteen inches high if sown and rolled in 
with the clover-seed. Then you should watch it 
closely, and as soon as it comes in blossom mow 
it down with a machine, and let it lie to protect 
and shade and nourish the young clover. 

Among old writers on agriculture I find that 
oats are strongly recommended to be sown in 
spring and summer, to be fed off by cattle to 
improve the land. If the animals receive noth- 
ing but the green oats for nourishment, of course 
their manure would add nothing to the soil that 
the pasture could not return if ploughed in or 
cut down and left upon the field. But if the 
cattle were fed with oil-cake or Indian meal, or 
something else, twice a day, it would make a 
material difference in the value of the manure 
left Avhile grazing on the green oats. 

Buckwheat might be used in the same way 
either as a green dressing or as feed for cattle. 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 157 

But in the latter case you must only let the ani- 
mals remain on the green buckwheat a short time 
once or twice a day. They are so fond of it, and 
it is so rich and so easily eaten, being soft and 
succulent, they would soon injure themselves if 
permitted to remain on the pasture all the time. 

The same precaution is necessary when feeding 
hay made of buckwheat to either horses or 
cattle. It should be very sparingly given or 
might be safely mixed with other food. 

Recent investigations of experimental chemists 
have discovered a remarkable similarity between 
Indian corn and clover in their assimilation of 
plaster. Although the former has always been 
classed with the cereals, this resemblance in their 
peculiar nutritive habits has awakened the ques- 
tion whether corn is not allied even to the le- 
gumes. Certain it is that Indian corn is so much 
benefited in its early stages of growth by a free 
use of plaster that scientific farmers have no hes- 
itation in numbering it among the renovating 
crops of the farm. 

14 



158 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

Then, can we not do something with it to re- 
store the old fields to a profitable state of produc- 
tion ? If our favorite clover will not grow to do 
any good, we can sow one or two bushels of plas- 
ter per acre on the thin, half-green, sedgy grass 
which lives upon the shallow mould which Na- 
ture has made prolific through long years of rest. 
Then plough it in with care only three or four 
inches deep, and drop ten to fifteen grains of 
corn to the foot in every third furrow. By this 
plan you manure the seed with the decaying 
grass and all the little soil there is, mixed with 
the plaster. As soon as the corn is up, and 
also when it is eight or ten inches high, it 
should have another free dusting of plaster 
while the morning dew is glistening upon the 
leaves. 

One or two good workings with the fluke will 
most likely be all it will require. 

If the season should be wet and warm, it will 
soon be high and dense enough to smother all 
weeds, and to keep the ground between the drills 



FAKMING WITH GREEN MANURRS. 159 

SO moist and shaded it will really seem in a state 
of improvement. 

As soon as the corn comes to maturity, and be- 
fore it begins to fade and change its color, you 
must roll it down with a heavy roller across the 
drills. 

If this does not break it down and make it lie 
flat on the ground, you had better go over it with 
the roller a second time, it makes the work 
look so much more business-like and complete ; 
or cut it down with a machine. 

The benefit which will accrue to the soil from 
this green dressing will be twofold. The ground 
being closely covered all the fall and winter, a 
very marked improvement will be perceptible in 
the darkness and mellow texture of the surface. 
The plant-food furnished by the gradual decay 
of the mulch, though beneficial, will not equal 
one quarter the improvement derived from the 
dense covering of the green manure. 

The expense is so trifling compared to the per- 
manent gain, you will certainly be willing to 



160 FARMING WITH GEEEN MANURES. 

repeat the operation. Do not kill the young 
giant in his cradle by making him try to carry 
a crop of some kind for the barn. I advise you 
when spring returns to plough in the mouldering 
fodder and drill in more corn, with plenty of 
plaster, and treat it in every particular as you did 
the year before. 

And when the second year is over, what then ? 

If you have no other field to put in corn, 
and your circumstances are so cramped by the 
stern necessities of life, you will have to put 
in this lot; and if you work it well and use 
plaster as before directed, you may raise thirty 
or forty bushels of corn per acre. 

But if you can spare the field from labor 
for a crop, and will continue the progressive 
improvement with sown corn for four or five 
years, precisely as you did the first and second 
years, you will never regret it. You will re- 
joice to see that the field is ready to take its place 
in a proper rotation with the best lots on the 
farm. 



CHAPTER XXI. 

HOW TO IMPROVE LARGE FARMS WITH 
GREEN MANURES. 

TT is a very common practice among agricul- 
■^ tural writers to advise all persons having 
large farms which are in a very poor condition 
to sell one-half or two-thirds of their land, and 
apply all the money they receive in manuring 
and improving the balance of their property. 

In some cases this may be the most prudent 
course to follow, but, as a general rule, I am 
opposed to this advice for two very good 
reasons : 

First, you can get but very little per acre 
for your poor fields; and, secondly, if you im- 
prove your property with judgment you can 
enhance its value so rapidly that in seven or 

14* L 161 



162 FAEMING WITH GKEEN MANURES. 

eight years it will be worth double or treble its 
former valuation. 

To begin your improvement, take the old 
field about half a mile from the house, and 
which is now covered with thin yellow grass 
and a mellow soil about one or two inches deep, 
produced by many years of exposure to the 
weather. 

It has never been ploughed since you knew 
it. And, I beg you, do not plough it now at 
the beginning of your efforts to make it better. 
Let me show you what a coating of fine mellow 
earth is worth upon the surface. 

In Egypt the annual overflow of the Nile 
deposits on the land a thin stratum of very 
fine soil which amounts only to four or five 
inches in a century. This yearly settling, which 
is only the twentieth of an inch in thickness, 
of almost impalpable dust, keeps the farms for 
ever rich and productive. The Egyptians do not 
plough this precious coat under, but sow the seed 
on the moist ground as the waters subside, and 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 163 

then, if possible, they drive sheep and hogs or 
goats over it to press the seed into the soil. 

We should all learn a useful lesson from their 
example and experience. We should not plough 
down the only part which the air has enriched 
by mingling and uniting with it for so many 
years, but early in the spring we should har- 
row as many acres of the old field as we can sow 
with clover-seed at one peck to the acre. After 
the seed is sown we should roll the ground and 
sow one or two bushels of plaster per acre. 

The principal roots of all plants must be near 
the surface, that they may feel the life-giving 
influence of air and moisture, or the soil must 
be loosened by Nature or by tillage, that the 
atmosphere may penetrate even to the deepest 
fibres of vegetation. Hence the reason that 
plant-food acts so well upon the surface, and 
that all seeds germinate more quickly, more 
naturally, when covered by only one or two 
inches of soil. But these great truths must 
not be misunderstood. Though the soil must 



164 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

be loose, the finer the seed the greater the ne- 
cessity when planting or sowing of pressing 
with the hand or foot or roller the earth into 
close contact with the grain. 

I remember a little incident which will illus- 
trate this subject and fix it in the mind. An 
old sea-captain who lived in our neighborhood 
tried every year to raise for himself a little to- 
bacco. He prepared a little patch of ground 
with the greatest care. The surface was as fine 
and rich and mellow as he could make it. Then 
he sowed the seed and raked it over once more 
very gently. 

Yet, much to his surprise and vexation, only a 
few stalks grew each year. But one spring, after 
the little bed had been sown with all the usual 
care, some fellow, to worry the old captain, went 
secretly on it and tramped and tramped, and 
danced and tramped it, till it was, to all appear- 
ance, as hard and solid as tlie most frequented 
public road. The poor old man gave him a 
seaman's blessing, whoever he might be, and left 



FAEMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 165 

it to its fate. But on his next visit to it he was 
astounded to see the whole bed covered with vig- 
orous plants of tobacco. It seemed that every 
seed had grown. He had a grand crop. After 
that he could always raise tobacco. 

He tramped the ground himself after the seed 
was sown. 

Well, to return to our old field. If the clover 
should grow five or six inches high by the middle 
of August, give it a half or a whole bushel more 
of plaster per acre. The second year you must 
treat it in the same way, and if the clover is thin 
on the ground sow more seed, and again roll it 
well. Do all this the third and fourth year if 
necessary. After this it will re-seed itself, pro- 
vided you continue the plaster each year. 

Here is a practical illustration of this plan 
which I know to be a fact. 

A person bought a very poor farm near the 
southern boundary of Pennsylvania, and tried to 
raise grain upon it in the usual way. But noth- 
ing grew large or strong enough to produce seed. 



166 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

Fortunately, he did not sacrifice the property by 
selling it at a very low figure, as many would 
have done. He sowed every acre of it with 
clover-seed and plastered it every year. For a 
living he followed the profession of an auctioneer. 

About seven or eight or more years the clover 
grew upon his farm, undisturbed by plough or 
hoof of any kind. Then he concluded to try his 
hand again at farming. Many of his neighbors 
gathered to see the first ploughing after so long a 
rest from tillage. 

An old farmer who was present assured me 
that the soil turned over eight or nine inches 
deep as black as your hat and as mellow as an 
ash-heap. 

More than fifty years have now passed since 
that occurrence, and the farm has the reputation 
of being rich and productive to the present day. 

I passed it a few years ago, and looked over it 
with about the same interest I would survey the 
fields of Marathon and Platsea, where a noble 
work had once been achieved by man. 



FAEMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 167 

One thing about it was always a source of re- 
gret to me. I never could ascertain the precise 
number of years the fields remained undisturbed 
in their growth of clover. 

Green crops have a manurial power equal, if 
not superior, to every other mode of improve- 
ment. Their roots penetrate the earth and open 
millions of channels, which permit the air with 
all its rich constituents to act upon the subsoil 
and improve it, not only by compelling the de- 
cay of vegetable matter, but by entering into 
new compounds and thus becoming available 
food for plants. 

A farmer once dug up a clover-root seven feet 
ten inches in length. This of course might be a 
giant among them. 

But what has once happened in Nature may 
happen again. We accept this as an index to 
the general average. 

We suppose that three-fourths — ^yes, we hope 
that nine-tenths — of all clover-roots are three feet 
in length. But if they penetrate the unploughed 



168 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

ground but two feet, what a vast amount of good 
they will do ! 

How superior in their action to barnyard ma- 
nure! They change the color, the texture, and 
the quality of the subsoil. We know what stable 
manure can do. The experience of ages is be- 
fore us. The farmers of England have been 
ploughing in the residue of their crops and 
raising grain more than fifteen hundred years. 
Therefore, if the contents of the barnyard and 
artificial manures will make a deep, dark, rich, 
and productive soil, we ought to find it, as a 
general rule, all over Great Britain. But what 
are the acknowledged facts in the case? 

Alderman Mechi says : " If you make a trans- 
verse cut or opening in the soil, you will find that 
the British agricultural pie-crust is only five to 
eight inches thick. The slips and railway cut- 
tings plainly reveal this humiliating fact. Below 
this thin crust we see a primitive soil, bearing 
most unmistakable evidence of antiquity and un- 
alterability. The dark shades of the cultivated 



FAEMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 169 

and manured surface have not been communi- 
cated to the pale subsoil." 

In another place he shows that all their labor 
and expensive fertilizers have extended only a 
few inches below the surface. 

He says: "My observation of the present 
cultivation of our stiff clays would give an 
average depth of about four or five inches : all 
below this may be considered as unknown and 
unimproved territory." 

Do not suppose from these quotations that 
we are in favor of plunging into the subsoil 
with a large plough and a strong pair of horses. 
Nothing of the kind: that task belongs to 
clover. 

We know that it is reckless, if not dangerous, 
even with fifteen or twenty tons of stable manure 
per acre, to plough deeper than usual under the 
delusive hope that we can easily make a thicker 
" pie-crust," and thus be able to raise larger crops. 

In 1865, on Plumgrove Farm, we had a field 
ploughed so deep that its productive power was 

15 



170 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

impaired for several years. It was done when 
I was not there, and of course I could not pre- 
vent it. We are so well satisfied of this fact 
that we record it as a warning to others. 

Mechi says : " We know that there is nothing 
of which a farmer is so much afraid as the sub- 
soil six or seven inches below the surface ; if he 
brings this at once to the surface, he will grow 
nothing for some time." 

These plain truths should convince every one 
that the cheapest and most effectual way to bring 
up a poor farm to a high state of productiveness, 
and also to prevent a good farm from becoming 
poor, is to keep every field in clover as long as 
possible. Other green crops are useful, but 
clover outranks them all. Follow this advice 
year after year, and you will find the dark crust 
of your farm is ten or twelve inches thick from 
the gradual decay of the clover-roots which have 
worked their way into the subsoil. Then it will be 
wise and profitable to plough even a foot deep into 
the new and rich fields which lie beneath the surface. 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 171 

But what shall we do for a living on our poor 
farm while every field is growing clover ? Well, 
that seems to be an important question, and most 
cheerfully I will answer it. 

But let me first prepare your mind for the 
advice I am going to give you. If you will ask 
the best and most successful farmers what pro- 
portion of their crops do they return as manure 
to the land, they will answer, we presume, in 
the words of Joseph Harris : " We put on the 
unsold produce of ten acres to manure one." 
Here you see that all the straw, corn-fodder, 
hay, and the residue of grain consumed on a 
farm of 100 acres would be returned as manure 
to ten acres. Is not that a capital concentra- 
tion? Certainly a field with such a dressing 
should bring forty bushels of wheat or eighty 
bushels of corn per acre. Yet for some reason 
this seldom happens. 

Now, how shall we raise anything on the poor 
farm which has been only three years in clover? 
The crop is not rapk, but remarkably good for 



172 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

such exhausted land. Yet it will not pay to 
plough up fifteen or twenty acres of it and put 
it in wheat. It might bring ten or fifteen bush- 
els per acre, but that will pay little or nothing 
for the labor and seed. What, then, shall we 
do ? We must do with clover what the farmers 
do with their manure. We must concentrate 
the whole resources of the farm, if required, to 
raise a large crop of wheat. 

Here is the sure and certain way to do it : 
There is a field of twenty acres. About the first 
of June, when the clover is coming into blossom, 
measure off one-fourth of the lot — that is, five 
acres — in one land through the middle of the 
field. Now take your mowing-machine and 
cut the whole of the clover down, and then 
with your horse-rake move all the clover on to 
the five acres and spread it carefully. There 
let it rot. All the rich elements in it will be 
carried into the soil and retained by the mois- 
ture, which is prevented from evaporating by the 
mulch. 



FAEMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 173 

When it is time to plough to put in the wheat 
you will find that you are master of all the re- 
quired conditions. The ground will be so moist 
and mellow beneath the mouldering cover you 
can plough even when others find their fields 
too dry and hard to work. 

After having drilled or harrowed in the seed 
you should roll the ground, provided the nature 
and texture of the soil require it. But this is 
not all you ought to do to ensure a good crop. 

I advise you to mow all the balance of the 
field on both sides of the plot, and rake it and 
carefully spread it on the seeded land. Patience 
and care in spreading this evenly are the most 
particular part of the operation. If left in thick 
bunches it will prevent the wheat from coming 
up. But if uniformly distributed it will shelter, 
protect, and manure the wheat, and the clover be- 
ing ripe, or nearly so, it will re-seed the lot com- 
pletely. 

By this plan you avoid all danger of having 
your crop injured by drought in the fall. If you 

16* 



174 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

plough in a heavy growth of clover, and seed 
with wheat after the one ploughing, and do not 
cover it with manure or straw or clover, the 
upper crust, being separated from the subsoil, 
may become so dry that the seed will make but 
a feeble growth during all the rainless autumn. 
This unfortunate state of things cannot happen 
when the soil and wheat are protected by the 
second crop of clover used as a mulch. 

Now, what have we gained by this new meth- 
od ? 1st. A good heavy crop of wheat — a crop that 
will pay all expenses and leave a handsome profit. 
2d. We leave fifteen acres still in clover, well 
plastered and in a constant state of improvement. 
3d. We have made more clear money off the 
five acres, after deducting the whole cost of the 
crop, than we could possibly have made off the 
whole field after deducting the labor of plough- 
ing, harrowing, rolling, and seeding the twenty 
acres; for a small return per acre will always 
be sunk on poor land by the cost of seed and 
labor. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

GREEN MANURES FOR WHEAT. 

/^OLMAN, in his European Agriculture, says : 
^ " Wheat, however, is to be considered as the 
standard grain and the great crop of England, 
upon which the arable farmer mainly depends for 
his money-returns from his farm and for the pay- 
ment of his labor and rent, and to which, there- 
fore, his attention is constantly and principally 
directed." 

Then why do they devote so many acres to the 
production of the turnip, which costs so much 
labor and such a heavy outlay for phosphates to 
obtain a large crop? And why feed all these 
turnips to sheep and cattle on the ground where 
they grew ? Do they derive such a profit from 
the animals that, after all expenses are paid, they 

175 



176 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

are certain of making considerable money ? No ; 
all this toil and all these costly investments are 
merely preparatory to ensure immense crops of 
grain. 

This remarkable feature of British agriculture 
is strongly described by Mechi. 

He says : " Suppose we take a farm of 400 
acres on the four-course or mixed husbandry 
system : we shall find that one-half the farm pro- 
duces nothing in the way of profit, but, on the 
contrary, leaves a considerable charge against or 
upon the remaining half, which is in corn. For 
instance, the horses consume one-quarter of the 
farm, the sheep and cattle consume another 
quarter; and you will find, if you give your live- 
stock much oil-cake or corn, that the whole of 
the expenses of one-half the farm have to be 
paid by the other half, which is in corn — that is, 
in wheat and barley." 

Here, then, is a complete revelation of British 
agriculture. If their farms were rich enough to 
produce a good crop of wheat or barley every 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 177 

year, the turnip crop would be abandoned until 
the raising and fattening of sheep and cattle were 
more profitable than at the present time. 

But as it is, the nitric acid and ammonia in 
the soil are not sufficient to produce large crops 
of grain, and they find it cheaper to convert the 
nitrogen of the air into these compounds by 
growing and feeding green crops to animals than 
by sending to South America for nitrate of soda 
or guano. 

And here is one great lesson which we must 
learn from their experience. 

That to give the land the full benefit of green 
crops they must be retained on the field, to be 
ploughed in or to be fed to animals. 

And further, we must acknowledge by our 
practice the important fact that of all manures 
obtained from sheep and cattle " twelve parts out 
of thirteen in weight escape as urine, only one- 
thirteenth part being solid. Well may farmers 
love the sheepfold, and well may they deplore 
yard- feeding." — Mechi, 

M 



178 FAKMING WITH GEEEN MANURES. 

Now, with regard to farming in the United 
States, we are as much under the necessity of 
converting the nitrogen of the air into plant-food 
as the British farmers. They depend, and we 
must depend, upon green crops for this purpose. 

But here comes a serious consideration. Our 
climate is not adapted to feeding animals in the 
field during the fall and winter. 

Besides this, we have to pay three or four 
times as much for hired labor as they do, and 
we cannot always get it when we need it. Hence 
the necessity of adopting a cheaper system of till- 
age. 

If we can furnish nitrogen to the soil at one or 
two cents per pound by ploughing in green ma- 
nures, is it wise to cut these green crops and feed 
them to cattle when the paramount object is to 
get the nitrogen which is in them for a crop of 
wheat ? 

If the clover, etc. can be converted into milk 
and butter or cheese, and these can be disposed 
of at a price that will pay all labor and leave a 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 179 

fair profit and the manure free of cost, that is 
another matter. No objection can be found to 
that kind of farming. But all who live on 
farms cannot follow the dairy business. More 
than one thousand million bushels of wheat are 
needed every year to keep the human world in 
action. 

Then, of course, somebody must raise wheat, 
and whoever will do it should be well rewarded 
for his trouble. 

Now, we sincerely believe that every bushel of 
grain produced in the world may be raised at a 
moderate profit, provided it is done in the best 
manner ; but it must be clearly understood that 
the same way will not answer in every quarter of 
the globe. 

The very cheap labor of England enables the 
farmer to have his wheat cleaned by hand and 
every weed carefully removed ; and when this is 
not done by hand he has the horse-hoe run between 
the drills to extirpate all grass and weeds and to 
loosen up the soil. 



180 FAEMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

'^ Lord Leicester offered a large reward to any 
person who would discover a single weed among 
his crops after their usual cleaning." — Caiman, 

We cannot have our wheat cleaned in that 
manner. We can get no hands for that purpose, 
and if we could the cost would overrun all the 
profit. Repeated trials in this country must cer- 
tainly convince every one that our best way to 
raise wheat is to plough in green crops. And to 
be always able to do this we should sow, if re- 
quired, plenty of bone-dust or super-phosphate 
of lime, besides plaster, and even, if necessary, 
put on a top dressing of stable manure, to ensure 
a big heavy crop of green manure ; then the wheat 
and corn will yield a handsome profit. What 
kind of a green crop would the British farmer 
have to feed to stock if he did not use the best 
of fertilizers on his turnip-field, and work it 
even better than we ever do our Indian corn? 

By ploughing in green crops there is no danger 
of making the ground too loose for wheat. All 
we have to do is to roll the land well with a 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 181 

heavy roller after seeding if too light and 
mellow. 

I will give one example from Colman to show 
that no soil can be too light for wheat if properly- 
managed. 

" Mr. Theadstow of Booth, near Liverpool, in- 
forms me that in 1844-45 on a piece of land less 
than a statute acre he produced sixty-four bush- 
els of wheat of seventy pounds to the bushel. 

"I will subjoin his statement in this case: 
* The soil is very light, consisting of a great por- 
tion of sand and lying close to the seashore. 
The land the previous year had been trenched to 
the depth of about three feet by hand labor and 
well manured with horse and cow manure, and 
planted with potatoes. 

" ^ When the wheat was sown the ordinary mode 
of cultivation was pursued. Something short of 
two bushels of white Dantzic wheat was sown. 
The seed had been produced on land of a heavier 
nature than that on which it was sown here. 
The mode of sowing was broadcast.' " 

16 



182 FAEMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

This is a very useful and interesting report. 
As the sowing was broadcast, of course the crop 
could receive no hand- or horse-hoeing in the 
spring. And what better proof could we have 
that light sandy land will produce large crops of 
wheat if well manured and well put in ? Wheat 
that has been drilled in is less likely to be killed 
in the winter ; and that is the main reason why 
that mode is superior to the broadcast. Here the 
latter method seems to have suited the climate so 
well that it is hardly possible that any other way 
could have done better. 

Many able farmers are satisfied that the most 
important crop which they can raise on their 
farms is the manure crop. Give them plenty 
of this material and they can raise large crops 
of everything else. This being an established 
fact, every effort, every spare dollar, and the most 
careful study should be directed to secure this all- 
important object. And it should be a matter of 
calculating investigation to every one whether, 
in his particular case, it would be better to cut 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 183 

his green crops, make them into hay, and feed 
that hay to stock, and thus lose by handling, 
wasting, and exposure a considerable portion of 
the residue, particularly the liquid portion, or at 
once, with very little expense, turn the crops in 
as green manure. 

He should be entirely convinced of the fact 
that clover gains nothing by being cut and fed 
to animals, but always loses a portion of its fer- 
tilizing power by passing through the barnyard. 

The quickest way to convert the green crop 
into money is to ' cut it down when in blossom, 
and let the rains leach out the albuminoids and 
the soluble minerals. 

While the ground is thus shaded, and while 
decomposition is going on in the first crop, a 
second will be springing up, and add an addi- 
tional dressing by September. 

Clover has this merit in a pre-eminent degree — 
that is, the ability to produce two or three good 
crops for manure in one summer. What objec- 
tions can be offered to this plan ? The plough- 



184 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

man will tell you that he cannot turn in the 
clover so well after it has been cut. We know 
that, but the advantage is so great that it is 
worth all the trouble and care which is required 
to plough it in when both crops are thus mixed 
together. Besides, two or three careful mowings 
every year will eradicate any weeds that may be 
in the way. There is another great advantage: 
the crops which have been cut get mixed with 
the soil, and some of it is brought to the sur- 
face with the harrrow. Hence there can be no 
danger of forming an open space between the 
upper and subsoil, which sometimes happens to 
such a degree as to be very injurious when a 
heavy growth of uncut clover is neatly turned 
in. 

After wheat has been sown on a loose and 
loamy soil you can driv^e over it as much as you 
please, to spread manure or straw or clover on 
it or to roll the ground, and the more compact 
you make the surface after turning in a big green 
crop the better. 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 185 

Mechi says : " For want of tliis autumnal 
rolling many thousand acres of light-land 
wheats have this severe winter been killed by 
the frost, which destroyed the roots, especially 
on the north side of the stetches. A farmer 
who lost fifty acres told me to-day that where 
he rolled in autumn he saved his wheat, having 
previously observed that where cart-wheels had 
passed over the land the plant was vigorous." 

In September, 1875, after the wheat was sown, 
we had twenty-seven wagon-loads of manure 
hauled across one corner of the lot. This made 
that portion more solid and firm than fifty roll- 
ings could have accomplished, yet not one par- 
ticle of injury was done to the wheat. 

This reminds me of an incident which hap- 
pened during our Revolutionary War. In the 
north of Delaware, near the head-waters of 
Mill Creek and about three miles north-west of 
Plum grove Farm, a field of wheat which had 
been sown in August was noticed on the 9th 

of September, 1777, to be several inches high 

10 * \ 



186 FARMING WITH GEEEN MANURES. 

and remarkable for its rankness and beauty. 
On the afternoon of that day General Howe, 
with an army of eighteen thousand men, and all 
their baggage and cavalry and cannon, encamped 
for the night upon that field of growing wheat. 
When they moved away the next morning scarce- 
ly an untrampled blade of the cereal could be 
seen. Most of the ground was packed solid, or 
was beaten into dry dust and had the appearance 
of a public road. Yet when spring returned it 
came forth with such vigor and produced such a 
magnificent crop that the good people of the 
neighborhood declared that Providence had 
taken special care of it because it had been 
trodden down by most unrighteous feet. 

We cannot leave this important subject without 
saying a few words more upon the different 
modes of raising wheat with green manures. 

If the field of clover is so rank and thick 
that it will produce, without any assistance, a 
large crop of grain, you have only to cut it down 
when in blossom two or three times during the 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 187 

summer and fall, and put the whole field in 
wheat in the usual way. 

But now comes a selfish question. How much 
wheat per acre will satisfy you? Will thirty- 
five or forty bushels pay you such a handsome 
profit that you will never try to raise a larger 
crop ? 

Is it not an established fact that the higher the 
amount of produce per acre the greater the prof- 
it? Generally speaking, we know this to be a 
grand truth. 

Then we want to know, as a matter of pecu- 
niary interest, how much wheat has ever been 
raised on an acre. 

In the American Agriculturist^ 1870, is a posi- 
tive statement that in the Napa Valley in Cali- 
fornia " 110 bushels of wheat had been raised 
there on one acre of land." 

Another gentleman said that he had harvest- 
ed from three acres of wheat 308 bushels. 

Colman says : " It is well attested that a crop 
grown in Norfolk county, England, produced 



188 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

eleven quarters two bushels three pecks per acre — 
that is to say, ninety bushels three pecks per 
acre." 

Now, let us ascertain, if possible, the actual cost 
of producing one acre of wheat. The general ave- 
rage, I believe, is twenty dollars. 

Then to raise twenty bushels per acre will cost 
one dollar per bushel, forty bushels but fifty 
cents, and ninety bushels but twenty-two cents, 
and 110 bushels but eighteen cents per bushel. 

Of course these estimates cannot be mathe- 
matically correct. But do they not approximate 
sufficiently to establish the principle that the 
greater the amount of produce per acre the less 
we pay per bushel in labor and money for it? 

To make farming a profitable business there 
must be a superabundance of plant-food in the 
soil. Although the plants cannot take up the one- 
hundredth part of it in one crop, still it must be 
there in profusion, that they may find enough in 
an available condition for all their wants. In 
this respect we must imitate the patient hunter, 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 189 

who puts, without complaining, over a hun- 
dred shot in a single load, though he is w^ell 
aware that only three or four can be effective to 
hit the bird. And should he be guided and con- 
trolled by that single fact, and only charge his 
gun with half a dozen shot, how often would he 
fail, and only kill by accident ! 

Yet, with what self-confident authority Liebig 
lays down the proposition in his first great work 
upon agriculture that " the manuring of an acre 
of land with forty pounds of bone-dust is suffi- 
cient to supply three crops of wheat, clover, pota- 
toes, turnips, etc. with phosphates " ! 

Certainly that is a parallel case to loading the 
gun with four grains of shot to shoot partridges. 

Regarding our statements as sound and prac- 
tical, how shall we use green manures to meet 
them? Shall we let the field of clover grow un- 
disturbed for three or four, or even five years, and 
cut it down two or three times in summer and 
autumn to mulch and enrich the ground, and thus 
ensure an immense crop of wheat when sown? 



190 FARMING WITH GEEEN MANURES. 

Or shall we double the green dressing over by 
mowing all the field as soon as the blossoms ap- 
pear, and rake all the clover on to one-half, to be 
ploughed in for wheat at the proper time ? And 
then, when the seed is sown and the land well 
rolled, we may cut the remainder, when the seed 
is ripe enough to grow, and spread it on the 
seeded half, and thus give it a second coat of ma- 
nure, and protect it from the winter and effectu- 
ally re-seed the field. 

I like this plan much better than the other. 
But if the clover is not rank and heavy enough 
by doubling it once to ensure fifty or sixty bush- 
els of wheat per acre, I would put fifteen acres 
upon five, or even twenty acres upon five, as de- 
scribed in the last chapter, and thus leave fifteen 
acres in clover to grow and improve the ground, 
while I raised an immense crop on one-quarter 
of the field. 

To conclude, I request the practical farmer to 
consider well before he rejects this method what 
a great saving of labor there must be between 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 191 

ploughing five acres of a moist, mellow soil, ren- 
dered by mulching as friable as an ash-heap, and 
the turning over of twenty acres of dry, hard, 
cloddy ground. 

In one of my fields a broad land had been 
covered with old hay for several months, and 
while under preparation for wheat I saw the 
horses, when the plough entered the mulched 
ground, look round in surprise, as if they were 
sure they must be loose from the plough, so light 
was the draft compared with the labor of turn- 
ing the furrows in the rest of the field. 

I appeal to every ploughman if he has not 
seen this more than once. Many indeed are the 
benefits derived from mulching. And of all 
mulches the land ever produced, the cheapest and 
the best, red clover in blossom, stands at the head 
of the list. 

I presume that every progressive farmer is 
aware of it. 

I ask attention to the testimony of one who 
speaks from long and careful observation. 



192 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

James Gaskins, a farmer of thirty years' expe- 
rience, published a little work in 1838 to promul- 
gate his views on protecting and covering the soil. 

He says : " It is an incontrovertible fact that 
the growth of grain is twice as rapid when the 
soil has previously been covered as when it has 
been exposed to frost, which causes evaporation 
to take place, apd your land becomes clammy and 
dead, until the land receives the nitre again by 
the dews and rains in the spring." 

The reader will take notice that this was pub- 
lished by him two years before Liebig brought 
out his great work. Chemistry applied to Agri- 
culture and Physiology y in which he pointed 
out his grand discovery, the existence of ammo- 
nia in the air; and notwithstanding Gaskins 
calls it nitre, he means the very same thing 
which Liebig discovered. Hence he is entitled 
to great credit for the observation that rains 
and dews bring down to the soil a something 
that will make it rich, and that we should retain 
it by covering the ground. 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 193 

If you will please to turn back and re-read the 
second chapter of this book, you will see that 
Boussingault and Prof. Johnson both acknow- 
ledge the fact that ammonia is daily lost when 
the soil is exposed in winter and summer. 

Besides this, "Brustlein ascertained further 
that ammonia which has been absorbed by a 
soil from aqueous solution escapes easily when 
the earth is exposed to the air, especially when 
it is repeatedly moistened and allowed to dry." 
— Johnson. 

Now, during the rains and hot suns of sum- 
mer where are the lands that are not " moistened 
and allowed to dry " ? Nowhere, except those 
that are well covered by something that will save 
the rich compound from escaping. 

Hence the undoubted profit, if not the im- 
perative necessity, of mulching all ground de- 
voted to tillage. 

As a matter of curiosity to many and of utility 
to others, I will give you Gaskins's method of 
putting in wheat. 

17 N 



194 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

He says: "You should seed your wheat in 
the months of September and October on the top 
of your clover on the hard ground. Plough 
your clover and wheat in about four inches 
together, and as soon as you turn them under 
seed the same ground down in buckwheat 
Then apply a large fallow harrow and pulver- 
ize the ground. Use the harrow in the same 
direction that you ploughed it; then seed the 
ground in timothy or orchard-grass, and the 
clover will seed itself from the crop you have 
turned in. Clear out your furrow so as to 
drain the land, and then take as heavy a roller 
as you can obtain and roll the land crossways. 

" You may see from this mode of seeding wheat 
that it is all manured in the hill. I have turned 
under the clover and the soil together, which 
manures the wheat. The buckwheat will come 
up in six or eight days and cover the land from 
the sun. The clover and timothy will do like- 
wise, and by the time the frost takes the buck- 
wheat it will be from eighteen inches to two feet 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 195 

high. The frost will kill the buckwheat, bat the 
straw will remain, which will keep the land warm, 
and the wheat will remain beautifully green all 
winter with the clover and timothy." 

This plan may do very well if the buckwheat 
will always grow eighteen inches or two feet 
high before the frost kills it. In my trials with 
it the fall happened to be too dry to make the 
buckwheat rank and high enough to do much 
good; yet there is so little expense attending 
the operation that I advise others to try it. 

I regard it as a singular fact that " in the 
State of New York buckwheat is frequently 
sown in August along with winter wheat, af- 
fording a ripe crop in the fall without injury 
to the wheat, which grows along with and suc- 
ceeds it." — Farmer's Encydopedia. 

The land must be very good and in high con- 
dition to stand this, and I presume the practice 
has been abandoned. I only record it to show 
that the two crops will grow well together. 
And where no grain is allowed to ripen and the 



196 FAKMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

buckwheat is used as a mulch, certainly it can 
do no injury to the wheat, and must be bene- 
ficial just in proportion to the height and 
denseness of the sheltering crop. 

Gaskins's mode of putting in wheat may 
answer, and where you have no drill it may 
save the crop from being killed in the winter 
to plough in the seed. 

In the American Farm Book Allen says: 
" In Northern Europe it has been found a pre- 
ventive against winter killing on strong clays 
to sow the wheat in the bottom of each furrow 
six inches deep, and cover it with the succeeding 
one. The wheat thus planted comes up as soon 
as on the fields sown broadcast and harrowed, 
grows more vigorously, withstands the winters, 
and produces larger crops." 

The statement that the wheat will come up 
as soon as that which has been harrowed in is 
at variance with some very careful experiments. 
But this is not the question under consideration. 
Will it prevent winter killing? We believe it 



FAEMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 197 

will in a great measure, because drilled wheat, 
being deeper than the broadcast, is seldom in- 
jured by freezing in very severe winters, when 
the latter is almost ruined. 

But here we must remember that wheat has 
to run the gauntlet of two modes of winter kill- 
ing. Besides freezing out, it has the chilling, 
drying winds to bear, and too often nothing but 
shelter or mulching will save it from the last 

calamity. 
17* 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

GREEN MANURES FOR INDIAN CORN. 

rpWO hundred and fourteen bushels of shelled 
-*- corn per acre is the largest crop that I ever 
saw published. It grew in Dearborn county, 
Indiana, in 1859, and took the first premium. 

Now, it is an interesting question, How much 
did this corn cost per bushel in labor and seed ? 
We find that agricultural writers in general agree 
that it costs twenty dollars in labor to raise an 
acre of Indian corn. Now, when we consider 
that the labor of ploughing, harrowing, rolling, 
marking out, planting, covering, and fluking an 
acre must be about the same whether the land 
is rich or poor, we feel justified in making a com- 
parison between the yield of rich and poor 
ground. 

198 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 199 

And here we find that the crop of 214 bushels, 
because it was all raised upon one acre, cost a 
trifle over nine cents per bushel ! 

How many farmers raise but twenty bushels 
per acre ! I know one, John Sleepy, who never 
raises more than this, notwithstanding he has 
been farming for thirty years on his own farm. 
He tries very hard to fill a certain crib every 
year, because he knows by actual measurement 
that it will hold 200 bushels of corn. Last 
year he filled it off a ten-acre lot. And yet he 
growls and growls, and complains and says that 
nothing can be made by farming. He says he 
wishes he had died when he was cutting teeth. 
Now, where is all the trouble? Let us look at 
it. 

His ground, though naturally a good quality 
of soil, is very hard to work : it has no vege- 
table matter in it. He has to harrow and plough, 
and roll and harrow, and still it is a field of clods. 
And what is worse than all is, what he cannot work 
to any satisfaction, the roots of his corn cannot 



200 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

work, cannot penetrate, and they have to crawl 
over a large space to get nourishment. Well, 
then, we presume it cost him twenty dollars an 
acre to raise corn. 

And because he had but 200 bushels on the 
ten acres he actually paid in hard labor one 
dollar per bushel for his corn! 

And this reveals the whole secret of his dis- 
content. But the strangest part is yet to be told. 
He declares that he will make money next year 
by raising corn if he has to put in twenty or 
thirty acres. But how much will he make? 
He may sell 200 bushels at sixty or seventy-five 
cents per bushel that cost him one dollar per 
bushel to put in the crib! 

He will not believe it costs him one-quarter as 
much as this to raise his crop. 

And he gives a most remarkable and irrefu- 
table reason for his belief. 

He says that he does nearly all the work him- 
self, and that he might as well be doing that as 
doing nothing. 



FARMING WITH GEEEN MANURES. 201 

What can we do to make him more happy in 
his noble profession? How shall we convince 
him that he should feed the land on clover and 
green corn and rye and oats to repletion? 

Can we make him believe that humus, vegeta- 
ble matter in a state of decay in the soil, is a 
powerful team — is more than four horses to a big 
plough ? It makes the earth mellow, it loosens up 
its texture ; the air and roots can penetrate it. It 
changes the color ; it converts the nitrogen of the 
air into nitric acid and ammonia. It absorbs and 
retains moisture better than anything else. It 
holds the constituents of plant- food in its millions 
of capillary vessels. It makes the soil so friable 
that it is never too dry or too hard to plough, and 
seldom if ever too wet to till. Ashes, lime, plas- 
ter, phosphates, and salt cannot do without it so 
well as they can act with it. 

In every stage of cultivation, in sandy loam or 
in stiff clay, it holds the organic foods of plant- 
life in a more available condition. Such is its 
value in tillage ; it has no equal, no peer, in its 



202 FARMING WITH GEEEN MANURES. 

power to attract moisture. To prove these strong 
declarations in its favor to be the whole truth, I 
cannot do better than to give you the following 
table, so carefully prepared by Schubler, an able 
chemist, and reported by Professor Johnson: 

Amount of Moisture absorbed by — 

Quartz sand, coarse 

Gypsum 1 

Lime sand 3 

Plough land 23 

Clay soil (60 per cent, clay) 28 

Slaty marl 33 

Loam 35 

Fine carbonate of lime 35 

Heavy clay soil (80 per cent, clay) 41 

Pure clay 49 

Garden mould (7 per cent, humus) 52 

Carbonate of magnesia (fine powder) 82 

Humus 120 

You often hear farmers say that one reason why 
plaster does so much good is that it attracts moist- 
ure from the air. 

Look at its feeble action in the table ! Why, 
humus is one hundred and twenty times more 
powerful in absorbing moisture! 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 203 

Ask a New Jersey farmer how he can raise 
anything on his white sand. He will tell you, 
" Give me plenty of stable manure or a heavy 
crop of clover or green rye or buckwheat to 
turn in, and I can raise anything I want, even 
a good crop of wheat or corn." 

Certainly he can; even on that dry sand the 
humus will hold moisture in the hottest day in 
summer. 

It was the unkindest cut of all in Liebig to 
speak so disrespectfully of humus in the soil. 
And, because he found it was not directly the 
food of plants, it was a grand mistake to de- 
clare that it is not necessary in any sense of the 
word. 

Too often his teaching has led the credulous 
student of agriculture from the plain path of 
common sense which his father had followed 
to a comfortable home on earth. 

I once knew a gentleman farmer who be- 
came so greatly enlightened by the plausible and 
profound reasoning of Liebig that he was induced 



204 FAEMING WITH GEEEN MANURES. 

to haul out all his manure into large piles and 
burn it into ashes. He had these ashes care- 
fully dusted about every hill of corn, and looked 
for grand results. But so little was gained by 
it he never repeated the experiment. 

Indian corn more than any other crop clearly 
proves the wisdom and profit of concentrating 
green clover or stable manure and labor upon 
a little land. The careful and experienced farm- 
er will often "use the unsold produce of ten 
acres to manure one." And yet we never hear 
any objection to this almost extravagant use of 
manure. But should we recommend the same 
thing to be done with green clover, you would 
probably hold up your hands in amazement at the 
advice. That is, the concentration of ten acres 
or green clover upon one acre ! Most fortunate- 
ly, you will not have to do that to raise an im- 
mense crop of corn. 

If you will take a field that is thickly set 
with clover, and the crop so heavy that it will 
cut fifteen tons of green manure just as it is 



FAEMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 205 

coming into blossom, you need only concentrate 
three acres upon one to raise 160 bushels of 
corn per acre if the season is very favorable. 

But it must be done in a certain way to be 
successful. I will give you the plan in detail, 
and then it will look more reasonable to the 
practical farmer. 

In a fifteen-acre field of clover measure off 
^ye acres in the middle of the lot, running clear 
across the field, leaving five acres on each side of 
it. 

When the clover is just beginning to blos- 
som cut down the whole crop and rake it on to 
the five acres. This first dressing will amount 
to 225 tons of green manure. Then sow a 
bushel of plaster per acre on the balance of the 
field, and by the 1st of August it will be 
in bloom again. This time we have but ten 
acres to cut. No doubt but this will give us 100 
tons, and must be mown and spread on top of 
the first crop. Then once more you should 
sow plaster to ensure a third growth of clover, 

18 



206 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

and by the middle or last of September we may- 
cut five tons per acre ; that will give fifty tons 
more to be spread on the other two crops. In 
all there will be 375 tons on the five acres, and 
every ton equal if not superior to a ton of 
stable manure. 

Now, our best and most successful farmers 
when manuring for corn put on fifteen tons of 
barnyard manure per acre. Do you suppose 
that that will be equal to our seventy-five tons 
of green clover per acre ? 

This green dressing of seventy-five tons con- 
tains 900 pounds of nitrogen, 187 pounds of 
phosphoric acid, and 675 pounds of potash. 
The fifteen tons of barnyard manure contain 
only 150 pounds of nitrogen, 75 pounds of 
phosphoric acid, and 187 pounds of potash. 
Yet you expect to have eighty bushels of corn 
per acre, and in good seasons actually realize that 
amount. Then have we not a very good reason 
to expect at least double what you raise — that 
is, 160 bushels on each acre? 



FARMING WITH GEEEN MANURES. 207 

Our green clover is put on exactly at the 
right time — in the summer and fall — and, what is 
of equal importance, is in the proper condition 
to be converted into available plant-food. It 
holds the ground beneath it for seven or eight 
months in a moist *and mouldering state and 
in a condition of constant improvement. Hence 
we depend not only upon the lavish amount of 
actual nourishment which we put on, but also 
upon the admirable preparation of the soil to 
produce a grand result. And when spring re- 
turns we are master of the situation. We can 
plough the very day that we should plant the 
corn. Dry weather cannot interrupt our farm- 
ing operations. 

Yet all our neighbors who have a naked, 
clayey soil may be moping about and wishing 
and praying for rain that they may plough to 
plant corn. 

When ground is heavily mulched with clover 
and the soil is a rich loam, and of course so 
mellow that ploughing is unnecessary, we can 



208 FAEMING WITH GKEEN MANUKES. 

raise corn without turning in the manure. If 
we are satisfied upon a careful examination that 
the clover is dense and deep enough to prevent 
all weeds from growing, we may put in the corn 
in the following manner : Open a space in the 
mulch the size of your hand with a hoe, and 
scrape a hole less than two inches deep ; then let 
an assistant drop in three or four grains of corn ; 
then cover it one inch, and tread on the hill as 
you leave it. Plant in this way in straight lines, 
three by three or four feet, all over the field till 
it is finished. After this you will have nothing 
to do to it till the crop is ready to cut up. 

I feel justified in recommending this method, 
having seen a report of a satisfactory experiment 
where leaves were used to mulch a crop of corn. 

James Camak of Athens, Georgia, says in the 
Farmer's' Register: "Last spring I planted a 
small piece of poor ground, first breaking it up 
well. The rows were made three feet apart, and 
the stalks left about a foot apart in the drill. 
The ground had been very foul last year with 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 209 

crab-grass, whose seed matured. The corn was 
not well up this spring before the grass began to 
appear. When the corn had about four or five 
blades the young grass completely covered the 
ground and the corn was turning yellow. I 
spread a small quantity of stable manure around 
the corn, and covered the whole ground with 
leaves from the forest, taking care to do this 
when the ground was wet, and the leaves also, 
that they might not be blown away, and to leave 
the tops uncovered. In ten days there was not a 
particle of living grass to be found, and the corn 
had put on that deep bluish-green which always 
betokens a healthful condition of the plant. 

" From the day the corn was planted until after 
the fodder was peeled and the tops cut nothing 
more was done with it, and the result is a product 
at the rate o^ forty -two bushels to the acre, about 
one-third of the stalks having two ears on each 
of them. 

" I noted in the course of the summer the fol- 
lowing facts : 

18* 



210 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

" 1st. The corn treated thus was always ahead 
of some planted alongside of it and treated in the 
usual way. 

" 2d. It ripened at least ten days sooner than 
other corn planted at the same time. 

" 3d. During the hottest and driest days the 
blades never twisted up, as did other corn in the 
neighborhood. 

" 4th. In the driest weather, on removing the 
leaves, the ground was found to be moist to the 
surface, and loose as deep as it had been at fir^ 
breaking up. 

" 5th. The heaviest rains had scarcely any ef- 
fect in washing away the soil or making it hard." 

We cannot, of course, use leaves to raise corn, 
but we can obtain that which is far better — an 
abundance of green clover. 

And when we remember that the chemist, after a 
careful analysis, has decided that dead leaves have 
so very little plant-food in them that they are not 
worth gathering, except as absorbents to be used 
as bedding for animals, we may be satisfied that 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 211 

the corn received no nourishment from the leaves, 
and all the benefit arose from the protection be- 
stowed upon it as a mulch. Then how vastly 
superior would a heavy dressing of clover be to 
the fallen leaves, which even hungry cattle will 
not eat, they are so worthless ! 

But another question comes up for settlement. 
Would that " poor ground," as he calls it, have 
produced forty- two bushels of corn per acre had 
he worked it in the usual manner? It certainly 
was in a most discouraging condition when all 
green with crab-grass and the corn turning 
yellow. 

The crop would certainly have ,been a failure 
had he trusted to the common, careless, slovenly 
tillage so often seen in such cases. Of course, 
laborious attention with hand and hoe and fluke 
day after day would have saved it, but this 
would cost more than the crop was worth. 

I cannot leave this interesting experiment 
without a further examination. 

Will corn do as well without any working, if 



212 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

the grass and weeds are kept down, as it will by- 
frequent tillage with the fluke ? 

If we can prove this to be an established fact, 
then the very best way to raise corn is to use a 
heavy mulch of something that will effectually 
prevent the growth of weeds and grass and at 
the same time manure the ground. 

I will here relate an authentic case where a 
crop was raised without the use of plough or 
fluke after the corn was planted ; 

"George W. Williams, of Bourbon county, 
Kentucky, has this year grown on one acre and one- 
eighth of land one hundred and seventy-eight bush- 
els, or at the rate of one hundred and fifty-eight 
bushels to the acre ! The corn was an early yel- 
low corn, and was planted in rows two feet apart 
and one foot apart in the rows. 

" The corn was dropped in a furrow, covered 
with hoes, the surface levelled and rolled after 
planting. The surface between the rows was 
scraped over with sharp hoes to cut the weeds, 
which was all the labor the crop received. The 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 213 

soil was good, ploughed deep in the spring, and 
before planting a thin coat of fresh stable ma- 
nure was spread over the surface, cross-ploughed, 
and harrowed. 

" Mr. Williams attributes much of his success to 
not disturbing the roots of the corn during culti- 
vation." — Cultivator, 1841. 

Now, to return to our field of five acres in 
clover in a state of decay. How shall we decide 
the matter? Which way will produce the most 
corn at the least cost of time and labor ? Shall 
we plough in the heavy dressing and work the 
crop as usual, or shall we put it in with the hoe 
and leave the mulch undisturbed ? 

The only certain way to decide this question is 
by careful and repeated trials of both methods, 
year after year, by a number of farmers and on 
different kinds of soil. If the crops should be 
equal, we should declare at once in favor of 
the mulching process. The soil would lose 
nothing by evaporation. One rain in May 
would ensure the crop against all drought. 



214 FAKMING WITH GEEEN MANUEES. 

The labor would be reduced to one-third or 
one-quarter. The ground would remain in a 
state of improvement during the fall and winter. 
And if the mulch was not thick enough to bring 
another crop of corn, it could be ploughed in for 
barley or oats or a second corn crop. By adopt-, 
ing this plan the whole field will be in clover, 
either growing or decaying, and in both cases im- 
proving the land. 

I presume, after all that has been said in favor 
of the new method of raising corn without tillage, 
or of the other method of concentration of all 
the manurial power upon a little land, very few 
will be willing to adopt either plan. They will 
still cling to the old practice of putting the 
whole field in corn, whether the land is rich or 
poor. Very well, let them do it ; necessity will 
teach them a better way. 

Why not let the field rest in clover three or 
four years, and then plough in by this means a 
heavy dressing of manure? 

This plan will be equal, of course, to concen- 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 215 

trating the growth of one year on to one-third or 
one-fourth of the field. 

Either method will ensure a large crop and 
pay well for the tillage. 

Remember, when a field is improved with green 
clover or other green manures the benefit will be 
seen for several years ; this proves that the great- 
est expense in raising corn is the labor. 

Let me prove this by an extract from Joseph 
Harris. In his last and best work, Talks on Ma- 
nures, he gives the cost per acre of raising corn, 
as follows : 

Preparing the land for the crop $5.00 

Planting and seed 1.50 

Cultivating three times, twice in a row — 

Both ways 5.00 

Hoeing twice 3.00 

Cutting up the corn 1.50 

Husking and drawing in the corn 4.00 

$20.00 

Thirteen dollars per acre of this labor may be 

saved by the new method. But let that pass 



216 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

now ; we wish to say something about the harass- 
ing and wearing labor of ploughing. 

Let us turn to England, and there we can see 
what an immense waste of horse-power there is 
in the present mode of farming. 

Mechi says : " In one place a pair of horses 
abreast will plough one acre per day ; in another, 
four, five, and six horses in a line will only 
plough three-quarters of an acre. 

" In Essex we plough once for wheat ; in some 
other counties three or four times (in some places 
nine ploughings for turnips ; in another only 
two). Here we allow seven shillings per acre for 
ploughing, while elsewhere thirteen shillings is 
a common price.'' 

Until farmers adopt an entirely different mode 
of tillage the horses required to do all the work 
will consume one-fourth of all they raise on the 
farm. 

There is no amendment to the old method that 
will do, but a radical change in the whole system 
of agriculture. 



FAEMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 217 

There should be for every crop, as far as pos- 
sible, a concentration of plant-food to such a de- 
gree as to do away with one-half or two-thirds, 
or even three-fourths, of all the ploughing. 
Then the business will be always profitable, 
always certain. 

It is the too frequent breaking up of poor land 
that keeps the farmer poor. And it is the sole 
dependence upon a scanty supply of poor strawey 
manure that keeps the land for ever in a poor 
condition. 

19 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

GREEN MANURES FOR POTATOES. 

rriHE reader will please remember that one 
-*- heavy crop of potatoes exhausts the land 
as much as three large crops of wheat. Hence 
he must expect his farm to suffer if compelled to 
produce potatoes every year. To provide for 
this great expenditure of plant-food you must 
either make or buy an abundance of stable ma- 
nure or plough in green crops. 

If you cannot obtain good rich manure for 
one dollar and fifty cents per ton within two or 
three miles of your farm, you had better con- 
clude to depend on clover ploughed in or used 
as a mulch. Another fact must not be forgotten. 
Potatoes will flourish better and be more mealy, 
more palatable, and more salable raised on sandy 

218 



FAEMING WITH GKEEN MANUKES. 219 

loam than on clayey ground. Hence it will be 
to your interest to select the most mellow and 
friable soil on the farm for this crop. 

Begin the year before to prepare the lot for 
potatoes. Take a field that is well set with 
clover and sow on it two or three bushels of 
plaster per acre in April. And if you can afford 
it sow bone-dust or super-phosphate of lime on 
the young clover. 

If the soil is rich and you have a reasonable 
expectation that by the next year the whole 
field will bring three or four hundred bushels 
of potatoes per acre, then you can prepare the 
land in the following way: As soon as the 
clover comes in blossom mow it down. This 
will check every weed that might be concealed 
among it. The second crop of clover will 
spring up and grow rapidly, and when in full 
bloom must be cut down like the first. Now, 
if August and September should be wet and- 
warm a third crop will grow so rank that you 
bad better mow it down when in full blossom. 



220 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

If you neglect this advice you may be troubled 
with weeds among the potatoes, and you will 
regret that you had not cut their heads off in 
their early growth. 

Do not let any person persuade you to plough 
up this field in the fall. And when spring re- 
turns, and about a week or more before you 
begin to plough in the seed-potatoes, sow on top 
of the half-rotted clover two or three bushels 
of plaster, five or six bushels of salt, and three 
or four hundred pounds of super-phosphate of 
lime per acre. If you have plenty of seed, plant 
whole potatoes not less in size than a hen's egg. 
If you have not seed enough, cut the large tubers 
into two or three or four pieces, and drop them 
in every third furrow. 

Do you think all this is too much expense and 
trouble? Have you forgotten that there is not 
a crop which you can raise which will pay as 
well as potatoes for all the labor and fertilizers 
bestowed upon it? 

If you cannot do all that we recommend, I beg 



FAKMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 221 

you to put on the plaster. And when the plants 
are a few inches above the ground begin and 
plaster their tops every two weeks till they are 
done growing. If the Colorado bugs should 
appear, then mix one pound of Paris green with 
every bushel of plaster that you dust on the 
plants till the bugs are destroyed. 

The above plan may be regarded as the usual 
way of putting in potatoes with clover, instead 
of using stable manure. Some farmers prefer 
to let the clover grow six or ten inches high 
before ploughing in the seed. 

If you wish to adopt this mode you had 
better plough the field before planting, and then 
run out the furrows to receive the seed. I have 
known the tender germs to be very much injured 
by turning a crop of green clover in the spring 
directly on them. The potato-sprouts appear- 
ed to be killed by the rich juice of the clover- 
stalks. 

On our farm at home I have seen, when a 
boy, 424 bushels of potatoes per acre produced 

19* 



222 FARMIJJ^G W TH GREEN MANURES. 

by ploughiDg in clover and dropping the seed 
in every third furrow. But these were raised on 
a lot that was so much the pet of the family that 
every crop which grew upon it was carefully 
measured. When in wheat it yielded forty-nine 
bushels per acre, and the crop of corn eighty- 
eight bushels to the acre. And when in clover 
well do I remember my father measuring stalk 
after stalk that ran five feet six inches in height. 
Now, my good reader, if your farm and mine 
would always produce such crops as these on 
every field, we might regard the question as set- 
tled as to what plan we should follow to 
ensure success. 

Nothing else would be required but to plough 
in clover over the whole field, and be well re- 
warded for all our labor. 

But what shall we do when we know that the 
farm is only in a poor condition? 

We wish to raise per acre as large a crop as 
was ever produced. It is the cheapest, the best, 
the most profitable, and indeed the only sure 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 223 

way to make money by farming. Bat how shall 
we do it? By the concentration of plant-food. 
There is no other way. 

Let us now prepare to raise an immense crop 
of potatoes. 

There is a field of twenty acres well set with 
clover. With a good machine mow it all down 
when in blossom. Now rake it all on to five 
acres, making one land through the middle of 
the field. About the first of August the re- 
maining fifteen acres will again be in bloom, 
and must be cut and moved with the rake on to 
the first crop. If a third crop should grow 
large enough to add considerable to the mulch, 
then mow it down when ready and spread it on 
the five acres. 

You see the whole object of this labor is to 
concentrate all the green manure of a large field 
on to one-fourth of the ground. Probably the 
best way to do this would be to rake the first 
crop into large and close windrows on the 
middle of the land, and the second crop into 



224 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

windrows alongside of the first, and move the 
third up in the same way. This would require 
no spreading of one cutting on top of the other. 

This plan leaves three-fourths of the field in 
clover, and yet it is very likely we can raise as 
many potatoes on the five acres thus prepared 
as on the twenty acres under tillage in the or- 
dinary way. 

Great credit must be given to the admirable 
preparation of the soil under the mulch, re- 
maining undisturbed in a moist, mouldering and 
enriching condition from September to April. 

And what a difference in the cost and labor ! 
As it requires about ten bushels of potatoes to 
plant an acre, we will save 150 bushels of seed 
by confining our operations to the five acres, 
and also the ploughing, harrowing, planting, 
fluking, and hoeing of fifteen acres of drier, 
harder, poorer soil. Is not this something? 
Is not labor the hole in the bag through which 
almost daily dribbles out one-half the farmer's 
profits ? The balance of the field, being left in 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 225 

clover, is in a state of gradual improvement. And 
how much better its condition than ground left 
bare and exposed all winter after a crop has been 
taken from it! 

Has not experience taught the intelligent 
farmer to concentrate his stable manure to such 
a degree that he finds it most profitable to '^ use 
the unsold produce of ten acres to manure one " ? 
Such is the acknowledgment of Joseph Harris, 
and doubtless of many others. As this is a 
grand truth respecting the residue of our crops, 
it must be the case with green manures. 

Then every hour of labor will receive its full 
reward. But is it so when the manure and 
labor are spread over a large field ? No, unless 
the field is very rich or the amount of plant- 
food almost unlimited. 

When stable or green manure is concentrated 
till it forms a close and dense shelter to the 
ground, do we not place the soil in the very con- 
dition that the nitre-beds are in, where thousands 
of pounds of saltpetre are made by artificial 



226 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

means? And does not this fact shed an abun- 
dant light on, if not a full and satisfactory 
explanation of, the remarkable benefit derived 
from covering the land, as related by Johnson 
and Anderson in the second chapter of this 
book? 

And mark the result of this wise concentration. 
Year after year you will be astonished at the 
great crops produced on land once carefully and 
deeply mulched by green manures or by any 
other means. 

I have seen five tons per acre of clover and 
timothy hay taken from ground which had been 
heavily mulched for potatoes six years before. 

To raise profitable crops of any kind, and 
particularly of potatoes, the greatest want of 
the farmer is manure. 

If you have plenty of straw to spare, I would 
advise you to use it with clover to mulch potatoes 
in the following manner: Cover the patch as 
above directed with the three crops of clover 
cut from the whole field. Let it remain all 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 227 

winter to mellow and protect the ground. In 
the spring, when it is time to plant, you must 
rake off all the mulch and then harrow or fluke 
the surface, if it is not already loose and mellow 
enough to receive the seed, and then sow two or 
three bushels of plaster per acre. Then drop the 
seed, about one piece to every square foot. Then 
cover, not with dirt, but with the half-rotten 
clover. Now, if the covering is not ten or twelve 
inches thick, so as to prevent all grass and weeds 
from growing, you must put on straw enough to 
make the mulch about one foot deep. 

I consider this a better and cheaper way than 
to use stable manure and straw. Here, you see, 
all the labor required is done at once — no weeding, 
no working, and nothing to do to the potatoes till 
they are ready to be taken up in the fall. To 
take them up, all you have to do is to turn the 
mulch over with a fork, and there are the potatoes 
all clean and ready to pick up without any 
digging. 

I cannot leave this subject without one more 



228 FAKMING WITH GEEEN MANURES. 

word of advice. Never use cornstalks to mulch 
potatoes, they are so troublesome to remove 
when taking up the crop. 

I once had a lot of sown corn — about thirty- 
five or forty tons to the acre — cut down with a 
mowing-machine, and then doubled over and 
left till spring for a mulch for potatoes. 

It was entirely too heavy to handle ; we 
never tried it again. 

There is a much better way to use green corn 
to raise potatoes. Sow the corn about twenty 
grains to the foot, in furrows three and a half 
feet apart. Plaster it, and work it two or three 
times, and when in full maturity run a deep fur- 
row between the rows of corn, and then cut the crop 
with a machine. Now, when the hands on the farm 
have one or more idle hours set them to work 
filling the furrows with the mown corn. And 
when this operation is completed let them during 
the fall and winter haul out old hay, straw, yard- 
scraj^ings, waste ashes, hen and ' stable manure, 
and when the hogs are killed the hair and blood, 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 229 

and indeed anything and everything that contains 
plant-food, and spread it along the furrows on top 
of the cornstalks. Many an hour when noth- 
ing else can be done may be devoted to this prof- 
itable work. 

When it is time to plant the seed potatoes in 
the spring all is ready to receive them. You 
have only to press the seed down among the ma- 
nure and sow all white with plaster, and then 
turn a furrow from each side on to every row. 
The middles may be fluked or ploughed, accord- 
ing to your judgment and experience. 

In 1865 I raised a grand and heavy crop of 
Jackson Whites in this way. I bought the seed 
in Philadelphia (twelve barrels) on purpose for 
this lot. 

The number of bushels per acre was not ascer- 
tained, because I had no idea then of ever pub- 
lishing the result. 

This little field has not yet forgotten the good 
treatment it received at that time. It is a grand 
truth that land which has been made rich by 

20 



230 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

mulching or by any other means has a remark- 
able power of remaining good for many years. 

Let me relate an interesting example of this 
fact from Mechi. 

He says : " Walking before harvest with a 
friend in his wheat-field, I was struck with the 
marked superiority of one corner, and asked for 
an explanation. 

" ' Oh,' he sai(^ ' this portion was once a cot- 
tage-garden.' 

" ' How long ago ?' 

" ' Why,' said he, ' I have known the field fifty 
years, and it was ten years before that time.' " 

With such a lesson as this before us, we should 
not be afraid of losing our golden treasures by 
piling on manure, particularly for corn or pota- 
toes. Here we have undeniable proof that land 
when well improved will hold its own for sixty 
years, and still show a '^ marked superiority." 
And is it not very probable that that corner got 
but little plant-food when the field was manured 
every four or five years for a crop of grain? 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 231 

Would not the farmer be likely to say, " Ah, you 
are rich enough ; you got your dressing when a 
garden " ? 

I once had a singular experience on Plumgrove 
Farm of the effects of mulching. 

I wished to bring a field of ten acres into 
clover as soon as possible. I had oats and 
clover-seed sown together in the spring, but was 
determined to have the oats cut when in blossom, 
to give light and air and perfect freedom to the 
clover. I concluded to raise late potatoes by 
using the green oats as a mulch. Not living on 
the farm, I was under the necessity of depending 
upon others to do all things right and at the 
proper time. 

The oats grew finely, and when the grain was 
in the milky stage two broad lands were ploughed 
and planted with potatoes, and then the oats were 
cut and spread nearly a foot thick on the fresh 
ground. 

On my next visit I was astonished to see 
how careless, how thoughtless, the foreman had 



232 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

been to let the oats get so far ahead before he cut 
them. It turned out just as I expected. The 
green stalks had strength and vitality enough in 
them .to mature and ripen all the seed. 

Then followed the most remarkable circum- 
stance in the whole experiment. 

It appeared that every grain of oats began to 
grow, and I am certain there were millions of 
seed that sent down their long roots to the 
ground, notwithstanding they rested near the top 
of the mulch and nearly a foot above the soil ! 
The potatoes of course were smothered out after 
a feeble growth. In September I directed the 
lands to be ploughed up. A few days after I 
received a letter from the foreman, requesting me 
to send out an engine of ten or twenty horse- 
power if I wanted those lands ploughed. 

I went out, and there was the plough stick- 
ing in the mulch, and not one yard could a pair 
of good horses move it. 

The oats, new and old, were woven together, 
consolidated, compact, and so tightly bound to 



FAEMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 233 

the soil that two years passed before we could do 
anything with it. 

It is now nine years since that happened, and 
we have had the field in wheat and corn and in 
potatoes, and those two lands are so rich that the 
wheat lodges, although we are careful to salt the 
ground, and the corn proves by its big ears and 
thick stalks that the soil is twice or three times 
as good as any other part of the field. 

It shows the great necessity of doing every- 
thing exactly at the right time. Had the foreman 
cut the oats just as it was coming into blossom, we 
doubtless would have had a splendid crop of po- 
tatoes, and still left the lands in a good condition. 
I record this failure as a warning to others. 

Do we not repeat this experiment every year 
by cutting grass or hay when the weeds among it 
are ripe enough to re-seed the field when we 
spread the manure made from the weedy hay? 

I am a firm believer in mulching with green 
clover, particularly for the purpose of raising 
immense crops of potatoes. I know that one 

20* 



234 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

thousand bushels per acre can be raised in that 
way easier than by any other method. I will re- 
late a case which I know to be a fact : An ac- 
quaintance of mine, a gentleman esteemed for his 
integrity and reliability, was sitting one evening 
in a shoemaker's shop in New Jersey listening 
to the conversation of two farmers. One said 
that he believed that one thousand bushels of po- 
tatoes could be raised upon an acre. The other 
offered to pay all the expense and give him a 
handsome premium if he would accomplish the 
task. 

The offer was at once accepted, provided there 
were no limitations enjoined as to time and 
means. 

As soon as the acre was carefully measured off 
many loads of rich manure were spread upon the 
surface and ploughed in. In about two weeks 
the seeds of weeds and grass began to sprout up 
very thick ; then the ground was again covered 
with manure, and again ploughed as before. 
This process was continued for two years; that 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 235 

is, repeated manuring and repeated ploughing 
till the soil was as rich almost as a barnyard in 
midwinter and as mellow as a feather-bed. 

Then the potatoes were planted by ploughing 
in the seed in every furrow. Nothing more was 
reqviired. When the crop was taken up it meas- 
ured eleven hundred bushels of good potatoes 
from that one acre ! 

My informant could not tell me how many 
loads of manure were put on ; he seemed only to 
feel a deep interest in the result, and was care- 
ful to be present at the final measurement and 
decision. 

I do not think that such a crop could always 
be obtained in that way. 

The season must have been remarkably favor- 
able in the amount of rain and heat and sunshine. 
Had the weather been very dry there might have 
been a partial failure. In all such trials the 
ground should be heavily mulched on top with 
clover or straw. Then there could be no such 
word as fail. 



236 FAEMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

Do you regard this experiment as too extrava- 
gant ever to be repeated? Is there any great 
loss of manure? 

What the crop could not assimilate remained 
in comparative safety. It was nearly all there, 
ready to produce great and grand harvests in 
future years. 

The loss of plant-food by evaporation or by 
leaching would not be so great on that one acre 
as it would on six or eight acres had he spread 
the manure over that much ground. Besides 
this, he could spread clover or straw over this 
one acre without much labor or expense, and 
thus secure it in a great measure from future 
waste. No good reason can be given why he 
should not continue to raise potatoes on this high- 
ly-manured acre. 

Bou^ingault says : " Potatoes may come again 
and again upon the same soil ; they are inces- 
santly cultivated at Santa Fe and Quito, and no- 
where are they of better quality." — Bural Econ- 
omy, 



FAEMING WITH GREEN MANURES: 237 

Again he says, in another place : " That there 
is no absolute necessity for alternation of crops 
where dung and labor can be readily procured is 
undeniable." 

The reader will please remember that Hender- 
son considers garden vegetables an exception to 
this rule. Experience has taught him that vege- 
tables do better by alternation every few years, 
and in some cases every year. 

The concentration of plant-food in general farm- 
tillage, which we have so earnestly commended, 
and, I feel, almost to a tiresome repetition of 
the subject, reminds me of a little instructive 
advice communicated to a young beginner. 

Not many miles from his home lived an old 
man remarkable for the wisdom and knowledge 
which he had treasured up as a very successful 
agriculturist and a very money-making farmer. 
The youth asked him if he would please to re- 
veal to him the choicest and most valuable secrets 
and gems of knowledge respecting their profession, 
as he was about to retire from it. 



238 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

"Yes, I will cheerfully do it," said the old 
man with a kind expression. "Go home and 
make five acres of your farm as rich as a gar- 
den, and then come to me and I will tell you 
what to do next." 

" Well, but suppose I cannot do that ?" 

" Then," replied the old man, " make one acre 
as rich as a garden." 

Now, we never heard what else he intended 
to reveal to him, but we can easily conjecture 
that he would say, when informed that he had 
complied with his advice, 

" Go and make another acre as rich as the first, 
and thus continue till the whole farm is as rich 
as a garden." 

How many persons get discouraged because 
they fail to enrich a large field all at once and 
all the same year! 

In conclusion, let me counsel you to follow the 
advice of the venerable farmer and you will 
never regret it. And to do this with profit 
and pleasure place your trust in green manures. 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 239 

And if not rank enough to bring a heavy crop 
over the whole field, then double it once or twice, 
or even three times, and "great will be your 
reward." 

There is one fact connected with the art of 
raising good potatoes which must not be for- 
gotten. If the rot should make its appearance 
you should plant in alternation with rows of 
Indian corn. Put your potatoes in furrows about 
seven or eight feet apart, and drill in the corn 
for a crop at the proper time in rows between 
them. I know this to be an effectual remedy. 

The poison which produces the rot is carried 
over the country in the fogs of the air, and 
when the moisture comes in contact with the corn 
it is condensed into drops of water, and thus 
the potatoes are protected from the poison-germs. 

It is a pathological truth that the miasm of 
marshes and stagnant waters is suspended and 
carried by aerial moisture, and hence the reason 
that trees and groves of sunflowers protect the 
dwellings of man from its deadly influence. 



CHAPTER XXV. 

GREEN MANURES FOR THE fHARKET-GARDEN. 

rriHOSE who engage in raising vegetables for 
-*- the market very soon discover that they can- 
not make the business profitable unless they 
manure very heavily every year. They must 
put on from seventy-five to one hundred tons 
per acre every spring of good stable manure, 
or something else that contains about the same 
amount of plant-food. Now, it will be too ex- 
pensive to haul manure several miles for this 
purpose, because every hundred tons contains 
about seventy-five tons of water. Therefore, 
you must depend on bone-meal or super-phos- 
phate of lime, or on guano, or on green crops 
for your market-garden. This being the case, 
you will soon discover that green clover and rye 

240 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 241 

are the cheapest and most reliable substitutes for 
stable manure or any foreign fertilizer. 

Regarding this as a truth, it settles the ques- 
tion as to the amount of land required for a 
profitable business. 

Ten acres are enough for all those who live 
near a city and can depend on it for all the ma- 
nure they need, while all who live at a dis- 
tance should have thirty or fifty, or even one 
hundred acres, according to the amount of bus- 
iness they wish to do. 

Before we say anything about the preparation 
of the soil by the use of green crops, let me 
relate to you an example of a very profitable 
concentration of manure and labor on a little 
market-garden. 

A man in New Jersey, within sight of the city 
of New York, in the spring of 1864 on one 
acre "planted 12,000 early Wakefield cabbages, 
which by the first week in July were sold in 
New York market, at eight dollars per hun- 
dred, for $960. Between the rows of cabbages 

21 Q 



242 FARMING WITH GKEEN MANURES. 

were planted at the same time 18,000 Silesia 
lettuce-plants, which, at one dollar and fifty 
cents per 100, brought $270. Both crops 
were cleared off by July 15, the ground 
being thoroughly ploughed, harrowed, and 
planted with 40,000 celery - plants, which 
sold before Christmas of the same year at three 
dollars per 100, or $1200 — making the total re- 
ceipts $2430. His expenses were : Manure, $150 ; 
keep of horse, $300 ; hired labor, $400 ; inciden- 
tal outlay, $100," besides the interest on his 
investment. 

Now, was it a misfortune that this man actually 
owned but one acre of land ? What would have 
been his procedure had he purchased six acres 
and had only money enough left to buy $150 
worth of manure? Is it not very probable he 
would have spread this amount over the whole 
six acres ? The temptation to do so would have 
been very strong. 

Nothing but an intimate knowledge of the bus- 
iness could have prevented it. 



.FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 243 

And what would have been the result on six 
acres ? Not more than one or two hundred dol- 
lars per acre would have returned to him, and but 
little would have been left after paying all ex- 
penses. We know that this would happen. 
We have seen it again and again with truckers 
who were not masters of the great secret of con- 
centration. 

The market-gardener must learn wisdom from 
the failures as well as from the remarkable suc- 
cesses of others. 

Let us now commence our operations without 
stable manure on a rich field of twenty acres 
well set with clover. 

By a judicious use of plaster we may be cer- 
tain by the time the crop is in blossom to have 
fifteen tons per acre. 

With a good machine we must cut this without 
delay, and rake it on the five acres selected and 
measured off for the truck-patch. The remain- 
ing fifteen acres will have a second crop of not 
less than ten tons per acre, and will be in bloom 



244 FAEMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

about the 1st of August, and must be mown and 
raked on top of the first cutting. 

Then you had better give the field another coat 
of plaster, and you will have at least five tons per 
acre by the middle or last of September. 

Cut this third crop before the blossoms begin 
to fade, and rake it on to the other crops. These 
three dressings of clover will make altogether 
525 tons of green manure concentrated on the five 
acres. Now, what will it cost to enrich the gar- 
den in this way? 

We have the published declaration of practical 
farmers that they can mow clover and make it 
into hay and put it in the barn for one dollar and 
a half per acre. 

If this can be done, then it will cost no more 
to cut the clover, and rake it and spread it on the 
plot in the centre of the field. Cutting the 
twenty acres once will be thirty dollars, the 
fifteen acres mown twice will be forty-five dollars, 
and one year's interest on the field, worth $100 per 
acre, will be $120, or altogether $195. 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 245 

Here we have the market-garden of five acres, 
manured with 525 tons of green clover at a cost 
of $195, and all ready for seeding and planting 
in the spring. Now let us compare this rich de- 
posit of plant-food with stable manure purchased 
in the city. 

Peter Henderson, author of Gardening for 
Profit, in a letter to Joseph Harris says : " In a 
general way it might be safe to advise that when- 
ever a ton of either cow, horse, hog or other 
stable manure can be laid on the ground for three 
dollars, it is cheaper than commercial fertilizers 
of any kind at their usual market rates. This 
three dollars per ton, I think, would be about the 
average cost in New York, Boston, or Philadel- 
phia. 

" We never haul it on the ground until we are 
ready to plough it in." 

This is exactly the information we need for a 
fair and honest comparison between the two sys- 
tems. We have the cost of the manure and all 
the labor of hauling and spreading given in one 

21* 



246 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

figure. Now, we only want to know how much 
is required. 

You will find that question settled in Hender- 
son's work. He says not less than seventy-five 
to one hundred tons per acre will answer for a 
market-garden, and this amount must be ap- 
plied every year. 

Taking the lowest quantity, the seventy-five 
tons will cost $225, and of course the manure 
for the whole five acres the sum of $1125. 

Now, subtract the cost of our 525 tons of 
clover from this, and we have a balance of $930 
in favor of the green manure. In other words, 
it will cost nearly six times as much for the stable- 
cleanings as for the green crop. Another matter 
of deep interest is involved in this comparison — 
the intrinsic value of the two in their capacity 
to furnish available plant-food. 

Three hundred and seventy-five tons of stable 
manure contain 3750 pounds of nitrogen, 1875 
pounds of phosphoric acid, and 4687J pounds 
of potash. Now, the 525 tons of green clover 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 247 

contain 6300 pounds of nitrogen, 131 2 J pounds 
of phosphoric acid, and 4725 pounds of potash. 

In the most costly element you see that clover 
has nearly twice the amount of it found in the 
manure. 

And we have only to examine the analysis of 
cabbage to see what kind of plant-food is required 
in a greater proportion than all the others, to 
know how these rival manures will hold out. 

Fifty tons of cabbage per acre are considered a 
large crop for a market-garden, and that amount 
contains 240 pounds of nitrogen, 140 pounds of 
phosphoric acid, and 630 pounds of potash. 
Again you see, on a careful comparison, that clo- 
ver is superior in its ability to produce a large 
crop of cabbage, and of course all other gar- 
den vegetables. 

There is but one more question to be settled in 
this examination. Is the nitrogen more available 
in stable manure than in the green clover ? No ; it 
certainly is not. I base this declaration on the 
careful experiments of Lawes and Gilbert. 



248 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

They found that forty-one pounds of nitrogen 
in nitrate of soda would produce as large a crop 
of barley as 200 pounds of nitrogen in stable 
manure. The reason was too plain to be mis- 
understood. In the nitrate all was available. 
In the manure but a moderate percentage of 
the nitrogen had been converted into nitric acid 
or ammonia. Hence the reason the crop could 
not be any larger in the latter than in the for- 
mer case. How different the condition of green 
clover! Being cut in a soft and soluble state, 
and being exposed to the leaching rains of the 
fall and winter, the albuminoids were carried 
into the soil, and the nitrogen in them gradually 
changed into nitric acid and ammonia. 

After the continuation of this improving pro- 
cess for a period of six months, what a mellow, 
dark, rich soil you will find in the spring under 
such a mulch ! If you do not remember every 
word which is quoted in the second chapter of 
this book in favor of covering the ground, do 
read it over again very carefully and see what 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 249 

a treasure you have in clover as a shelter and 
fertilizing agent, and how incomparably cheaper 
to improve with it than by any other means 
within your reach. 

Whether it would be better to plough the 
mulch under in the spring before planting and 
seeding, or only disturb the friable and crumbling 
mould enough to receive the seed and young 
plants from the hot-beds, must be a matter of 
experience or knowledge gleaned from such 
works as Henderson's Gardening for Profit. 

Besides clover for the market-garden you will 
find green rye of great value for all kinds of 
vegetables which can be sown or transplanted 
as late as the 10th or 15th of May. See the tenth 
chapter of this work for very strong testimony 
upon this subject. 

You may plough in a heavy crop of clover in 
August or September and sow three bushels of 
rye per acre, and have fifteen tons per acre of good 
green manure to turn in by the middle of May. 



CHAPTER XXVI. 

GREEN MANURES FOR THE ORCHARD. 

T?RUIT trees of all kinds should be planted 
in a rich field well set with clover. In June, 
or whenever the crop is in blossom, you should 
cut the clover and rake it up and mulch every 
tree. This covering should be about one foot 
deep, and should extend not less than six feet 
from the body of the tree in a circle all around 
it. This mulch will last three or four years. 
But you must not forget every fall to open a 
space around each tree about twelve inches wide, 
to keep the field-mice from cutting the bark. 
And if the rabbits are plenty on your farm you 
must protect the bodies of all young trees by 
wrapping something loosely around them, ex- 

250 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES, 251 

tending from fifteen to eighteen inches from the 
ground. 

Old bark from other trees, such as the oak 
and chestnut, will answer the purpose. In fact, 
anything will do that will protect the tree. 

Where stones are plenty they may be so care- 
fully piled around the trunk as to form a pro- 
tection for years against every bark-destroying 
animal. 

I had a fine young orchard nearly killed by 
rabbits eating the bark off near the ground and 
nearly girdling every tree. This was done be- 
fore I was aware of the danger. I could 
scarcely believe that so much injury had been 
accomplished by a few rabbits till I gave per- 
mission to two hunters to shoot them ; but when 
they killed thirty-five in one day I saw at once 
that Plumgrove Farm was still entitled to its 
early reputation as being a place very attractive 
to gunners, and that all my fruit trees were in 
danger. 

The first crop of clover, you recollect, is all 



252 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

devoted to mulching the orchard. Every year 
after this you must cut down the green clover 
twice or three times and leave it spread on the 
ground to protect and improve the soil, and you 
had better sow one bushel of plaster per acre 
every spring. 

As soon as the trees begin to bear, then I ad- 
vise you to sow all over the orchard three or four 
bushels of salt per acre every year. This will 
have a remarkable effect upon the fruit and as- 
sist to prolong the life and energy of every 
tree. 

The apple, pear, peach, quince, plum, ap- 
ricot, cherry, grape, strawberry, gooseberry, 
currant, raspberry, blackberry, and indeed all 
things that grow out of the ground, are great- 
ly benefited by a thick mulch, particularly of 
clover. Besides this, some trees require a care- 
ful examination about their roots to destroy 
all worms that infest them. The peach above 
all others needs this inspection. 

If the clover does not re-seed the ground, and 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 253 

thus keep the orchard well set with it, you should 
sow half a peck or more per acre wherever it 
appears to need it. Do not suppose the seed will 
not grow. 

William West of Upper Darby on his fine 
grazing farm "found it necessary to sow clover 
thinly on the green grass sod every three or 
four years to correct a slight tendency which 
green grass has to bind the soil." If clover- 
seed will grow on such a sod, there is almost 
a positive certainty that it will grow beneath a 
mulch on a field of clover. If it will not, there 
is either a want of nourishment or the surface 
of the ground is too loose for the seed. Super- 
phosphate of lime will correct the first, a 
heavy roller properly used will remedy the 
second. 

22 



CHAPTER XXVII. 

THE ANIMALS AND BIRDS OF THE FARM. 

rpO be a farmer of the highest respectability 
■*- you should have a clear understanding of 
the position you occupy in relation to all things 
under your control. 

Animals, and particularly those subject to 
your will, "are endowed by their Creator with 
certain inalienable rights." Among these are 
proper nourishment, the kindest treatment, and 
ample protection. Hence we must respect these 
rights, and must regard them as natural laws 
which must be obeyed, or we will fail in a great 
measure to receive from the dependent creatures 
the full value of their services. 

The horse and the cow, with very little intel- 

254 



FAKMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 255 

lectual endowment, have the feelings and propen- 
sities strongly developed, and will love those who 
will make them companions and will treat them 
with sincere affection. And they can and do 
greatly suffer in health and energy and spirit 
when beaten with clubs and harshly abused by 
words. Therefore you must enjoin upon all 
persons in your employment to speak very 
kindly to and handle very gently all the crea- 
tures on the farm. 

No animal, not even man, can have a healthy 
digestion and a buoyant and energetic and live- 
ly spirit, and a full power of execution, which lives 
in constant fear of those around it. 

The presence of the owner or a hired man 
or a servant should excite a feeling of con- 
fidence in animals, and a disposition to play 
and to get near to him, that they may manifest 
in their mute way their love and dependence on 
him. 

This deportment carried out in all the re- 
lations of servitude will make everything and 



256 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

everybody more healthy, more happy, and more 
able to discharge the responsible duties of life. 

If you speak to a servant in a harsh, cutting 
tone of voice, with a savage expression of the 
eye, till you excite his destructiveness, he will 
go directly to the stable, and the first horse he 
meets he will kick in the side and tell him to 
get out of his way or he will smash his skull 
in. 

This course, you see, will not do. The whole 
tactics of farm-life must be changed. 

First, you must establish a perfect self-govern- 
ment over your own mind. Never permit 
yourself to utter an unkind word to a servant, 
or it will, most likely, be rained and hailed down 
with double force upon the poor animals about 
you. Besides, there is nothing gained by it ; 
there is not even a worldly policy in it. 

The strongest and most effective, most pow- 
erful, word in any language is please. By a 
careful and judicious use of this expression you 
can get more hard labor, more earnest and faith- 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 257 

ful service from hired help, than the constant use 
of the sternest epithets can accomplish. The 
reason is, that little complimentary word recog- 
nizes them as equals before God, and does not 
disturb their self-respect. 

There is another class of life which must not 
be forgotten. 

The birds must be protected. The worms and 
bugs and other insects are preying upon our 
crops, and cannot be exterminated by any means 
in our power without the assistance of all kinds 
of birds. Yet you will destroy them because 
they eat a little of your grain. 

What! are you so lost to every sense of justice 
that you will deny all compensation for benefits 
conferred? That feeling would withhold every 
bushel of grain and every handful of hay from 
the horse and the cow. They labor faithfully, 
yes, they do, and must receive a heavy reward — 
one-fourth of all you raise on the farm. 

The destruction of a few moths and butterflies 
will prevent thousands of eggs from being laid, 

22* R 



258 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

and consequently prevent thousands of worms 
from destroying your crops. A little bird upon 
the wing may do this work in an hour, and when 
satiated with animal food wall you deny it a thim- 
bleful of grain? If you will, you become the 
peer of the midnight thief, who will never make 
a return for value received. 

Six hundred species of caterpillars are already 
known in America. Most of these are the de- 
scendants of beautiful moths and butterflies, 
and many of them live by destroying the useful 
works of man. What shall we do with them? 
The army-worm at this very moment is eating 
our wheat and corn and grass. 

Can we make no defence against this loathsome 
monster? Yes; a lady has just come in from the 
country and reports that two days before the 
roads and fields were alive with the worms, and 
now there is not one to be seen. Thousands of 
blackbirds and sparrows settled down on them like 
a cloud, and devoured them. 

What is this? The 6Zac^6M'c?s eat them ! Yes; 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 259 

and should we not remember with a blush of 
shame how the gunners were encouraged to 
shoot these poor birds in the spring when seen 
building their nests on high trees near the corn- 
fields? 

And what young rascals we were in childhood, 
to hunt their nests and gather their eggs merely 
for playthings ! 

Our parents should have thrashed us for every 
egg we destroyed. 

And what excuse had we? They sometimes 
pull up the young corn. They do ; but the ento- 
mologist tells us that the natural food of the 
blackbirds is " larva, caterpillars, moths, and 
beetles, of which they devour such numbers that, 
but for this providential economy, the whole crop 
of grain in many places would probably be de- 
stroyed by the time it began to germinate." 

Birds are so indispensable. If pure selfishness 
will not save them, they should be protected by 
strong and relentless laws. And more than this : 
boxes of various kinds should be put up for 



k 



260 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

them, not only near the house and barn, but on 
trees in the woods and fields about the farm. So 
many hollow trees have been cut down, so many 
dense thickets cleared up, and so many large 
woods removed from the face of the earth, the 
birds cannot find places to build and live among 
us. Hence the necessity we are under to put up 
tenant-houses for them. 

They will pay an enormous rent for the little 
dwellings by the destruction of worms, moths, 
butterflies, and other insects. 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 

ON DIVIDING THE FARM INTO FIELDS. 

TT would be doing great injustice to the admir- 
-*- able system of farming with green manures 
to make no comparison as a matter of economy- 
bet ween it and the common mode of tillage. 

When you plough in green crops you enrich 
the land without the necessity of making manure 
by grazing and feeding animals. Hence you 
save the great expense of erecting new fences 
every few years and the annual repair of old ones. 
What few horses and cows you are obliged to keep 
may run on lands that are never ploughed, or be 
kept in small enclosures by a judicious system of 
soiling. Few persons are aware of the cost of 
keeping a large farm well fenced into seven or 
eight fields until they have tried it for a number 

261 



262 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

of years. To give you an idea of the immense 
outlay required for this kind of farming, I will 
quote two reliable authorities. 

In the Year Book of Agriculture Wells says : 
"The amount of capital employed in the con- 
struction and repair of fences in the United 
States would be deemed fabulous were not the es- 
timates founded on statistical facts which admit 
of no dispute." 

Burknap, a well-known agricultural writer, 
says : " Strange as it may seem, the greatest in- 
vestment in this country, the most costly produc- 
tions of human industry, are the common fences 
which divide the fields from the highways and 
separate them from each other. 

" No man dreams that, when compared with the 
outlay for these unpretending monuments of art, 
our cities and our towns, with all their wealth, are 
left behind. 

" You will scarcely believe me when I say that 
ihe fences of this country cost more than twenty 
times the amount of specie that is in it." 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 263 

Here is a revelation so startling, and yet so 
true, that it should set every thinking man to a 
close, careful, and calculating investigation before 
erecting another panel of inside fence. 

And when he sees all these structures which di- 
vide his farm into fields going down to dust by 
a decay v/hich no human agency can prevent, he 
will rejoice to learn that he can save nine-tenths 
of all this expense by adopting and combining 
together the green manure and the soiling sys- 
tem. 

I remember seeing a statement that the Hon. 
Josiah Quincy on his large farm tore out seven 
miles of inside fences when they were getting too 
old to be of any value, and instead of erecting 
new ones adopted the more economical method 
of soiling all his cattle. By this plan he found 
that he could keep as many animals on twenty as 
he formerly could keep on sixty acres in pasture. 

We are glad to find that the experience of 
many others coincides with his views. 

Colman in his European Agriculture says : 



264 faemingJ with geeen manures. 

" That a great saving of food is effected by soil- 
ing there can be no doubt ; no one rates it at less 
than two to one ; many say that three animals, 
some assert with confidence that four animals, can 
be well kept upon the produce of land, if soiled, 
where not more than one could be kept if depas- 
tured." 

Now, it is a common remark that if you make 
your land so rich that one acre will bring as 
much grain or grass as two acres would but a 
few years before, you really double the size of 
your farm. This may seem like a paradoxical 
expression, yet if you double the productive ca- 
pacity of your land it is certainly much better 
than to purchase a poor farm alongside of it. 
The man who owns one hundred acres of good 
tillable land which he has always devoted to graz- 
ing may well say that he is now running a three- 
huudred-acre farm if by soiling he is fattening as 
many cattle on his one hundred as others are 
doing on their three hundred acres. And this is 
fact, not fiction. 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 265 

I think I hear the reader say, " Will you please 
to tell us something about the expense of cut- 
ting grass and other things and feeding the ani- 
mals?" 

Yes ; and time will turn your granite rocks of 
objection into solid ingots of shining gold. In 
other words, all the objections to the soiling sys- 
tem shall disappear beneath the profits and wis- 
dom of the enterprise. 

In advocating the new system of soiling to 
save the expense of fencing, and to leave many 
broad acres flourishing in rich crops for green 
manures, we ask a complete modification of the 
old-fashioned way of stall-feeding. You know 
well that more than half the manure of animals 
is in a liquid condition, and cannot be saved in 
the stable or in the yard without great expense 
and trouble. 

What, then, shall we do ? We must combine 
the folding with the soiling method. We must 
put up a temporary fence, enclosing a half or one 
or two acres, and feed all the horses and cattle in 

23 



266 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

this pen, and thus save all the liquid and solid 
excrements where they can be used without the 
labor of removing them. 

We need not make any estimate of the amount 
of green corn or clover which will grow on this 
lot the next year. It will be so rank you will 
never get tired looking at it. 

But how shall we shelter the animals from the 
hot suns of July and August ? 

That will be much easier than you suppose. 
A few crotches firmly planted in the ground and 
covered with corn-fodder or straw will make 
comfortable umbrellas for them, beneath which 
the air will move in a gentle breeze. 

This plan will be far more healthy than shut- 
ting the cattle up in the stable. 

I always tell my patients to live and sleep as 
much as possible on the healthiest side of the 
house, and that is the outside. The same advice 
is applicable to all creatures. 

By folding and soiling together you see we 
accomplish a great desideratum, the concentration 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 267 

of plant-food, which will always ensure success 
and victory. 

When I bought Plumgrove Farm I found 
it divided into eight enclosures. But, strange 
to say, not a field had a name by which you 
could write or speak of it. I at once gave 
every lot a characteristic name. I give them 
here, to show you how easy it will be to know 
and remember them : 

Littlefield is the smallest enclosure; Brooh- 
jield has a little stream of water running 
through it ; Clearfield has no obstructions in it ; 
Woodsfidd has a woods in it ; GuUyfield unfortu- 
nately has two gullies in it; Springfield has a 
cool spring of water in it ; Rochfield has many 
rocks in it; and Meadowfield is a permanent 
meadow, which has a large run of bright 
water flowing through it from west to east, 
which divides the farm into two nearly equal 
portions. With this arrangement it is very 
convenient to charge every field with all we put 
on it, and to give credit for all we take off it. 



268 FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 

My system of farming does Dot require the 
inside fences to be kept in repair, but we let 
the old landmarks remain. There is an ad- 
vantage in having the farm laid out in fields, 
even when there is no necessity of erecting fences 
on the dividing-lines. The crops themselves 
are generally sufficient to show the boundary 
of each lot. Besides this, every field should be 
carefully measured and the number of acres 
noted down, so that you can tell without 
guessing wliat quantity of seed you may have 
to buy or how many bushels of plaster or other 
fertilizers will be required for any particular 
lot. 

As this chapter has been devoted mainly to 
pointing out the difference between soiling and 
grazing, I cannot conclude without calling your 
attention to the present appearance of the coun- 
try. For many miles around the city of Wil- 
mington the pasture-fields are brown and bare 
and apparently destitute of verdure. The grass 
is nearly dead. The hungry animals wander 



FARMING WITH GREEN MANURES. 269 

over the fields, and in many places can find 
nothing but weeds to eat. It is more than two 
months since we had a deep wetting rain. Only 
an occasional light shower fell in May and June 
and up to the present moment, this 15th day of 
July, 1880. 

What better opportunity could occur to com- 
pare the merits of the two systems of feeding 
cattle ! The sown corn is now green, fresh, and 
vigorous; the drought has not withered it. 
The quantity may be lessened, yet so little has 
it suffered from the dry weather it is still in a 
growing condition. What a contrast between 
it and the dead grass of the fields ! 

This warning should be lifelong to every 
farmer, and never again should he let the spring 
pass away without putting in one or more acres 
of sown corn, that he may be independent of all 
drought. 

23* 

THE END. 



RECENTLY ISSUED. 



A CHARMING NEW POEM. 



ELFLORA 

OF THE SUSQUEHANNA. 

By C. HARLAN, M. D. 

12mo. Extra Cloth. Price, 75 Cents. 



Trof. It. W. JjANDIS, D.I)., autJior of '^THE CROSS," says: 

"I could not put it down until I had devoured it all — 
to the very last line. I am greatly pleased with it. The 
plot, style, and execution, all have interested me greatly. 
Your versification has nothing to fear from a comparison 
even with Dryden. You have his flow, cadence, and rhythm. 
Your power of description is equal to his own. No man, 
however gifted, has ever attained to your mastery of the 
poetic power of expression without a good deal of thought 
and practice, the charm and melody of your versification 
and your pictured images are so admirably presented in your 
descriptions." _. 

FOR SALE BY 

PHILADELPHIA, 

Or will be sent by mail on receipt of price by them, 

270 



COMMENTS 



OK 



JOHN C. HARKNESS, A.M., 

Graduate of Bowdoin College, 1864, and Principal op the 
Academy at Tenth and Market Sts., Wilmington, Del- 
aware, AND Publisher of Harkness's Magazine. 



The poem "Elflora of the Susquehanna/^ by 
C. Harlan, M. D., is so delightfully entertain- 
ing that whoever begins its perusal will not lay it 
aside without completion, save from sheer neces- 
sity. I have read it a number of times, and find 
it just the thing to entertain an honored guest. 

It has great strength and stirring energy of 
diction, refined sentiment, clearness and fidelity 
of description. Its combination of these high 
and exceedingly rare merits gives the poem 
" Elflora " immortality. Mental power glows in 
every page. The plot is so skilfully wrought 
that you all the time want to knoAV what is 
going to happen next. 

Such a work is a monument to its author's 

genius, infinitely more enduring than marble 

column or granite structure. 

271 



The following extract, from the Third Canto of 
" Elflora," will show how sincere and truthful are 
these criticisms : 

'Twas nearly day as downward through the wood 
They bent their course, though every object stood 
In all that shadowed loveliness of night 
Which rests on earth when planets all are bright; 
When clouds are only scattered far and few, 
Making the clear a purer, deeper blue. 
Such was that balmy morn; the setting moon. 
Half down the west, was near her mountain-tomb; 
The winds were still, the birds not yet in song. 
And all was silent as they moved along 
Through forests gilded by the level ray. 
Which slept on leaves and cliffs that walled their way. 
While slow they walked by crags and giant trees, 
There came a sound, so like the whispering breeze 
That none but CLiFTOisr, haply listening, caught 
The low-breathed murmur, and its meaning sought 
By hurried glance around and through the shade, 
Where Night and Silence seemed in slumber laid. 
And there a form he saw approaching near 
With cautious step, perchance controlled by fear. 
The moon a glory round her features threw 
As she in breathless quiet nearer dre^ 
And stood so still, so pale, that Death seemed there ; 
Nor corse nor statue ever shone more fair. 

272 ^' 




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